Let's deal with the elephant in the room first: is it "the Yukon", or just plain "Yukon"? In a magazine article on the aeroplane on our way out here there was an interview with Shirley Adamson, lifelong resident of this territory, who was asked the question, 'You’re on the phone to a friend from the Outside. No one from the government is listening. Do you say “Yukon” or “The Yukon”?' Her answer was, 'I don't care if the government is listening or not, I say "The Yukon".'
Apparently saying "Yukon" is considered so... Outside.
Next a note on the term "sourdough". Sourdough bread is a type of bread made using a "starter" - basically a pre-fermented product made using naturally occurring yeast - as opposed to bread flour to which yeast is added. Hardened gold miners knew that trying to make bread with yeast in the cold Yukon winter doesn't work, it had to be made with a sourdough starter which could be kept alive for years, decades even, by feeding it fresh flour. So people who had survived a Yukon winter came to be known as "sourdoughs", while newcomers to the area were given the derisory name cheechakos, a word meaning "tenderfoot", or in this day and age, a n00b.
Sandra and I, technically, are cheechakos, but I like to think that we're well on our way to becoming sourdoughs.
[A note here about the "sour-toe" cocktail I mentioned at the start of this holiday. When it became apparent that in these modern days surviving a Yukon winter wasn't as big a deal as it had been, they needed a new way of measuring a person's mettle. A man called Captain Dick Stevenson came up with the idea of drinking a cocktail in which floated a preserved human toe. As you drink it, you have to touch the toe with your lips, and hence become a "sour-toe" as opposed to a "sourdough". I had thought this would be a wonderfully quirky thing to do, until I got to Dawson and saw that a huge number of people, including Holland America parties, were doing it, whereupon it immediately lost its charm and quirkiness. More information about the cocktail is here.]
We awoke this morning to the sound of rain. It's only the second time that's happened this holiday, and I didn't begrudge it, because it's always easier to leave a place when it's raining. Having breakfasted and packed, we loaded Arthur up for the last time and slipped sadly away from our Haines Junction lodgings. Our first stop was just a few hundred yards up the road, at the Visitor Centre, where we turned in our Yukon passports. We picked these up in Whitehorse when we first got there, and the idea is that as you go around to the different places of interest in the Yukon, you get them stamped. If you get ten places stamped, you can enter into a draw to win 2 Troy ounces of gold. If you get twenty places stamped, the draw is to win 5 Troy ounces. We got twelve stamps each (I tried to get sneaky extra stamps at places, but Sandra always spotted me). The woman at the Visitor Centre signed our forms, and then gave us both a little gold (not real gold) Yukon badge. "Thank you," I said, "I'll treasure this." And I nearly choked up as I said it, because I will treasure it.
We drove on then, almost two hours to Whitehorse, stopping a couple of times to take pictures of the views, but the scenery out this way isn't quite as staggering as it is coming into Haines Junction: I think we did the loop the right way, anti-clockwise. Prairie dogs and squirrels ran back and forth across the road at random, as they had when we were driving up to Otter Falls yesterday, playing their own real life version of Frogger.
As we approached Whitehorse the traffic level increased alarmingly. I'd not actually driven in Whitehorse before, just out of it, but we had a plan to get some sandwiches from The Deli which we'd used when we were here a couple of weeks ago, and eat them by the river. This meant me having to navigate traffic lights, multi-lane roads, and yes, even that blasted roundabout near to the hotel we'd stayed in, before we parked up, trembling slightly from nerves, near the S.S. Klondike.
We walked back into the town past our hotel, where there was a marquee set up with stalls inside selling First Nation artefacts. The whole town seemed to be buzzing, far busier than it had been when we were last here, and far busier than what we've grown used to over the last couple of weeks. We got our sandwiches and scurried back to a picnic table near to the huge sternwheeler, and ate mostly in silence as dark clouds started to roll in.
Then it was time to say goodbye to Arthur, and we drove him - with intense concentration - through the middle of busy Whitehorse once again, then parked him up at the airport and unloaded him. 2600 km we drove altogether, 1600 miles, much less than in Alberta or BC, but over much harder roads. And of course with our flights to and from Inuvik, plus travelling up from Vancouver, we've covered much more ground than either of those two holidays.
We checked in to the Air North desk, then had a gruelling four hour wait before our flight back to Vancouver. We sat in the airport building for a while, me watching a fat woman in a pink tracksuit complaining to someone that her suitcase had got dirty in the hold of the aeroplane. Complaining and complaining. There were three officials dealing with her at one point. I watched her leave the airport building and get on a Holland America coach, still complaining. I have a view on fat women who go on holiday wearing pink tracksuits which I won't share here.
After a while we went and sat outside in the sun, because the dark clouds had rolled away. The accoutrements of our holiday had been sloughed away one after the other: first our accommodation, so we had nowhere to stay, then our vehicle, so we had no way of going anywhere, and then our belongings, checked in and vanished into the bowels of the airport. We watched the prairie dogs playing Frogger across the airport runway, which is actually a lot safer than on the roads because only about six flights land here per day. Eventually it was time to board our flight, and we flew back down to Vancouver, catching a glimpse of Mount Logan - the highest mountain in Canada - in the distance, stopping off at Kelowna (where Ogopogo lives) on the way. We got into Vancouver at about 9:30 pm, people everywhere, so many cars and vans and trucks. We caught the complimentary coach to our final hotel of this holiday, the Radisson Aiport Hotel, a slick place with credit card door keys, smartly dressed serving staff, beeping confirmations of button presses and where, ironically, a power cut suffered by their internet service provider means this post will go up a day late. And no one gave me the opportunity to say, "no, this is the end of our holiday, not the start."
We arrived too late for the hotel's restaurant to feed us, so we went out looking for just a burger to fill a hole, but there was nothing of that ilk that we could find: instead, a glut of Chinese restaurants, but we didn't fancy Chinese, so we came back and ordered room service of mac and cheese, and thai noodles. Also it was dark by 10 pm, and we saw the moon for the first time in three weeks, it feels so... southern.
I don't know how to adequately sum up my feelings about the Yukon. I've already said I was nervous about this holiday. I didn't know what to expect. I thought it might be okay weather, with interesting and quirky places to visit, and I hoped beyond hope to see some amazing sights. I didn't expect that the most useless item of clothing I bought with me was my thick, heavy coat, and I certainly didn't expect to get a tan, but that's what's happened. There's no doubt that the good weather has been a bonus, but from what people have told us the only exceptional thing about the weather this year has been the level of the heat, not the amount of sunshine.
I'd wanted to go north, to go further up than Peace River or Prince Rupert, and see what the world looked like from higher up. I wanted to feel the gravitas of the globe curling away under me, in the same way that I felt it above me when I stood at the southern-most tip of South Africa last year. I wanted to feel like we were stretching up to reach the top of the world... and in doing so I've found that there are places to go to that are even further, and more unreachable, and possibly more interesting, still to explore.
We've both been stunned by the raw beauty and the unspoilt nature of this part of Canada. At times you feel like a trespasser, and that the road you are driving along and the vehicle you are in are interlopers - which they are. I've been stunned over and over by the scenery, and by the people who have been friendly and warm almost to an individual; here at the hotel tonight I went to get some ice, and nodded to a bloke by the lifts, who ignored me.
It's safe to say I've never been anywhere like the Yukon. I'm no sourdough, I've only seen the place in the summer, but that's been enough. It feels like it's taken a part of me.
We fly back tomorrow, so, with enormous sadness, this is my last entry.
Thanks for reading.
This is the Yukon, signing off.
Friday, 19 July 2013
Wednesday, 17 July 2013
Day 20 - Otter Falls, Pine Lake, and Forest Fires
There was a bit of excitement here last night. As I was finishing off my blog on the deck outside, I noticed that what I'd thought was a thunderhead cloud that had been building had actually dropped to street level. I'd been sneezing quite a lot, and was suddenly aware that the air had a distinctly "burny" smell about it. That and the small amounts of ash that started landing on my t-shirt began to get me worried. You couldn't see either end of the street for what was, obviously now, smoke and not thunderhead. Boyd Campbell at the Village Bakery yesterday had told us that the air here is very dry because all the moisture from the Pacific Ocean is lost as snow on the other side of the mountains (falling on what is the largest non-Polar icefield in the world), with the result that the whole of the Yukon, with all that forest, is like a big tinderbox.
"Forest Fire" was the only thing going around in my head. I walked to both ends of the street to see if I could see advancing flames, or herds of animals galloping away from impending doom, but basically everyone seemed to be going about their business as normal. The Haines Junction emergency services building (fire and ambulance) is three buildings down from ours, and there was no flurry of activity there whatsoever. I tried the news channels and found nothing, then looked on the internet and found the Yukon Wildland Fire Management Facebook page. There was a message there from about half an hour previously saying something along the lines of, "there's a tiny fire about 35 km from Haines Junction, that's what all the smoke is, it's not threatening anything, so stop worrying".
It was a something of a relief, but more so when the smoke had lifted by about midnight.
This morning there was no smoke in the air but you could still smell it, and have been able to all day. Checking out the Yukon Wildland Fire Management pages, they're looking after fires all over the territory, and the very east seems quite badly hit. I hope they get some rain soon... but not until after we're gone.
After breakfast we headed out on the Alaska Highway towards Whitehorse, the road we will be taking tomorrow as we complete our time out here. The intention was to visit Aishihik Lake and Otter Falls, both on a road leading north from the Alaska Highway, but we weren't sure if it was going to be possible because that's the area in which the forest fire was burning last night. The assumption was that, if there were going to be any problems, there would be barriers and flashing lights across the relevant roads.
As we came over the hill just outside Haines Junction we had our first view of Paint Mountain which overlooks Pine Lake, our second planned destination of the day. You could see the smoke from the previous night's fire hanging over the mountain, and stretching out to the east over the route we were due to take. I pulled my face a bit, but there had been no further updates this morning, so we plugged on.
The first thing we came to was an old wooden bridge over the Aishihik River at Canyon Creek. It turns out this bridge - which was in the process of being restored (though not at that actual moment) - was built by none other than Sam McGee, once resident of Dawson City and whose cabin we had seen a couple of weeks ago in Whitehorse at the MacBride Museum. He certainly got about a bit.
We drove on from there, looking for the Otter Falls road which seemed, on the map, to be quite close to the Canyon Creek bridge. We drove past it and I dismissed it because, well, surely that wasn't a proper road? A few miles further on I realised it must have been, so we about-faced and came back, turning onto another of the gravel roads we've seen so many of in this territory. Poor Arthur readied himself for another bumpy ride.
Because of the forest fire last night, I was expecting at any moment to find the road blocked, but it wasn't. In fact at one point we came upon roadworks (these being seemingly a man in a vehicle custom-made to shift the gravel around a bit), and several huge trucks came past us, carrying more gravel for the other vehicle to smear around. The speed limit along the road was 70 km/h, but you'd have to be some sort of crazy person to attempt that sort of speed: I was keeping it around 40-50, and slowing down to 20 in places. Otter Falls was about 30 km up this road, and Aishihik Lake about another 50 km after that. I told Sandra there was no chance we were going to go to the lake on a road of such dubious quality, and she agreed. It was quite weird, there were signs advertising it as a place of recreation, as if it was somewhere you'd pop off to on a sunny Saturday afternoon... no wonder they all drive Dodge Rams.
Eventually we came to the falls themselves. There was a little pull-out with information boards, but as expected there was no one else there. The falls used to feature on the back of the old Canadian five dollar bill. There seems to be no real reason for this other than that officials at the Bank of Canada reviewed thousands of photographs from all over Canada, and they liked the one of Otter Falls. They're certainly very picturesque, but not as stunning as they used to be as, apparently, hydroelectric works further up the river have nicked a load of the water, which is a shame. But then, we all still want electricity.
After a while we turned around and headed back down the gravelly road, and when we got to the main road turned right and made for Pine Lake. It's down a road signposted for Pine Lake Campground, which at first makes you think you might be taking the wrong route, but you're not. There was no one else there when we got there, just a beach, a fantastic view of the lake and Paint Mountain behind it, and some picnic tables. We sat down at one of the tables with our sandwiches, and another couple of vehicles showed up, vomiting children, women, and a man wearing a cowboy hat, dark shirt, and jeans in the searing sunshine. He must have been baking. The children ran out to the lake and splashed about it in while we ate; I couldn't bring myself to be grumpy about them.
After eating, we followed a little trail around the bottom end of lake for a while: it wasn't very long and we were soon back on the beach, where we found the other vehicles had gone again. It was mid-afternoon by now, so we came back to Haines Junction, both feeling listless and a bit depressed. There was a local market on, which we went to and wandered around in ten minutes flat. It wasn't very big, but it was enthusiastic and there was a woman there producing lots of homemade Thai food for people to take away. We went down to the Village Bakery and had a couple of ice-creams, and sat in the sunshine. To my utter delight there were a couple of blokes on a nearby table talking complete nonsense to each other, just like Bob and Doug McKenzie:
"So this re-cycling thing, I just take my re-cycling out once a week, and then, like, it's gone."
"Really? Can you put like, batteries in it? And paint cans?"
"I don't know, I should try it, eh? Oh, hello Mr. Horsefly."
"Have you noticed that there's not so many bees around?"
"No."
"Yah, no bees. Plenty of horseflies though. And wasps."
Sandra kept asking me what I was laughing at, I couldn't say anything until they'd gone. I've not heard anyone call anyone else a "hoser" yet, but I've heard more Canadian "eh?"s up here than I heard in Alberta and BC put together.
We got back to the Suite and Mrs. Watson had left us a bottle of wine as a leaving present, which was a really touching gesture. People here are just so friendly. Even our waitress at the Northern Lights Restaurant wrote, "Safe travels home!" on our bill tonight. It's going to be a real wrench to leave.
Tomorrow we head back to Whitehorse and then Vancouver. Let's complete this loop.
"Forest Fire" was the only thing going around in my head. I walked to both ends of the street to see if I could see advancing flames, or herds of animals galloping away from impending doom, but basically everyone seemed to be going about their business as normal. The Haines Junction emergency services building (fire and ambulance) is three buildings down from ours, and there was no flurry of activity there whatsoever. I tried the news channels and found nothing, then looked on the internet and found the Yukon Wildland Fire Management Facebook page. There was a message there from about half an hour previously saying something along the lines of, "there's a tiny fire about 35 km from Haines Junction, that's what all the smoke is, it's not threatening anything, so stop worrying".
It was a something of a relief, but more so when the smoke had lifted by about midnight.
This morning there was no smoke in the air but you could still smell it, and have been able to all day. Checking out the Yukon Wildland Fire Management pages, they're looking after fires all over the territory, and the very east seems quite badly hit. I hope they get some rain soon... but not until after we're gone.
After breakfast we headed out on the Alaska Highway towards Whitehorse, the road we will be taking tomorrow as we complete our time out here. The intention was to visit Aishihik Lake and Otter Falls, both on a road leading north from the Alaska Highway, but we weren't sure if it was going to be possible because that's the area in which the forest fire was burning last night. The assumption was that, if there were going to be any problems, there would be barriers and flashing lights across the relevant roads.
As we came over the hill just outside Haines Junction we had our first view of Paint Mountain which overlooks Pine Lake, our second planned destination of the day. You could see the smoke from the previous night's fire hanging over the mountain, and stretching out to the east over the route we were due to take. I pulled my face a bit, but there had been no further updates this morning, so we plugged on.
The first thing we came to was an old wooden bridge over the Aishihik River at Canyon Creek. It turns out this bridge - which was in the process of being restored (though not at that actual moment) - was built by none other than Sam McGee, once resident of Dawson City and whose cabin we had seen a couple of weeks ago in Whitehorse at the MacBride Museum. He certainly got about a bit.
We drove on from there, looking for the Otter Falls road which seemed, on the map, to be quite close to the Canyon Creek bridge. We drove past it and I dismissed it because, well, surely that wasn't a proper road? A few miles further on I realised it must have been, so we about-faced and came back, turning onto another of the gravel roads we've seen so many of in this territory. Poor Arthur readied himself for another bumpy ride.
Because of the forest fire last night, I was expecting at any moment to find the road blocked, but it wasn't. In fact at one point we came upon roadworks (these being seemingly a man in a vehicle custom-made to shift the gravel around a bit), and several huge trucks came past us, carrying more gravel for the other vehicle to smear around. The speed limit along the road was 70 km/h, but you'd have to be some sort of crazy person to attempt that sort of speed: I was keeping it around 40-50, and slowing down to 20 in places. Otter Falls was about 30 km up this road, and Aishihik Lake about another 50 km after that. I told Sandra there was no chance we were going to go to the lake on a road of such dubious quality, and she agreed. It was quite weird, there were signs advertising it as a place of recreation, as if it was somewhere you'd pop off to on a sunny Saturday afternoon... no wonder they all drive Dodge Rams.
Eventually we came to the falls themselves. There was a little pull-out with information boards, but as expected there was no one else there. The falls used to feature on the back of the old Canadian five dollar bill. There seems to be no real reason for this other than that officials at the Bank of Canada reviewed thousands of photographs from all over Canada, and they liked the one of Otter Falls. They're certainly very picturesque, but not as stunning as they used to be as, apparently, hydroelectric works further up the river have nicked a load of the water, which is a shame. But then, we all still want electricity.
After a while we turned around and headed back down the gravelly road, and when we got to the main road turned right and made for Pine Lake. It's down a road signposted for Pine Lake Campground, which at first makes you think you might be taking the wrong route, but you're not. There was no one else there when we got there, just a beach, a fantastic view of the lake and Paint Mountain behind it, and some picnic tables. We sat down at one of the tables with our sandwiches, and another couple of vehicles showed up, vomiting children, women, and a man wearing a cowboy hat, dark shirt, and jeans in the searing sunshine. He must have been baking. The children ran out to the lake and splashed about it in while we ate; I couldn't bring myself to be grumpy about them.
After eating, we followed a little trail around the bottom end of lake for a while: it wasn't very long and we were soon back on the beach, where we found the other vehicles had gone again. It was mid-afternoon by now, so we came back to Haines Junction, both feeling listless and a bit depressed. There was a local market on, which we went to and wandered around in ten minutes flat. It wasn't very big, but it was enthusiastic and there was a woman there producing lots of homemade Thai food for people to take away. We went down to the Village Bakery and had a couple of ice-creams, and sat in the sunshine. To my utter delight there were a couple of blokes on a nearby table talking complete nonsense to each other, just like Bob and Doug McKenzie:
"So this re-cycling thing, I just take my re-cycling out once a week, and then, like, it's gone."
"Really? Can you put like, batteries in it? And paint cans?"
"I don't know, I should try it, eh? Oh, hello Mr. Horsefly."
"Have you noticed that there's not so many bees around?"
"No."
"Yah, no bees. Plenty of horseflies though. And wasps."
Sandra kept asking me what I was laughing at, I couldn't say anything until they'd gone. I've not heard anyone call anyone else a "hoser" yet, but I've heard more Canadian "eh?"s up here than I heard in Alberta and BC put together.
We got back to the Suite and Mrs. Watson had left us a bottle of wine as a leaving present, which was a really touching gesture. People here are just so friendly. Even our waitress at the Northern Lights Restaurant wrote, "Safe travels home!" on our bill tonight. It's going to be a real wrench to leave.
Tomorrow we head back to Whitehorse and then Vancouver. Let's complete this loop.
Tuesday, 16 July 2013
Day 19 - The St. Elias Lake Trail
While planning the Haines Junction part of this holiday, the first of the walking trails I had highlighted in my hiking guide by Vivian Lougheed was the St. Elias Lake Trail. However the same walk is mentioned in my Bradt guide, and because of what I've now discovered is a printing error in the latter (it reproduces part of the the description of a different trail under the St. Elias Lake Trail), I'd ended up dismissing it as one that we wouldn't find enjoyable to do. I spotted this mistake last night, and realised that actually this walk would be a good one, only a couple of hours or so long, but still off the beaten track (on a holiday that is, on the whole, quite off the beaten track).
After a breakfast of Alpen and the last slices of Mrs. Watson's homemade bread toasted and slathered in the odd white butter they have here, we took off down the Haines Highway again, this time past Kathleen Lake and past the Rock Glacier. Eventually we saw the sign for the St. Elias Lake Trail pull-out (lay-by), and turned into it. There was no one else there, not even a Holland America coach. It's things like this that remind you that, even during the tourist season, most of the Yukon is still pretty empty. You start to wonder if you should have let someone know where you are going.
But this trail is described as easy, following an old road, good for a child's first backpacking experience, and only taking a few hours at most. I left our Village Bakery sandwiches in the car, not wanting bears to smell the food on me (they would just have to smell me as food), and then, having liberally sprayed ourselves with insect repellent, we headed into the woods.
Not far in we came upon our first wild life experience of the day; a cute and fluffy chick of some sort, fluttering its way up into a tree. We watched for a while, then noticed a parent bird at the base of the tree. I think it was a Spruce Grouse, it might have been a Ruffed Grouse. It studied us, watching warily, then fluttered its wings a few times. Suddenly a second chick flew out of the undergrowth, and when we pointed and went, "ooh look", as you do, the parent bird went nuts. It puffed out its neck feathers and wafted its wings, then ran at me, clucking. To be honest it scared the crap out of me, which doesn't bode well if we ever encounter a bear under similar circumstances. We both jumped backwards, and the bird kept coming, then started circling, protecting its young. Thirty feet in to the trail and we'd met the equivalent of Monty Python's Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. And we were without the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
We eventually got past our adversary by running quickly up the trail shouting, "it's all right, we're going, we're going"... Intellectual and strong humans - 0, tiny little bird without opposable thumbs or discovery of fire - 1. Once out of danger (us, not the grouse), we settled into our pace. After a few short hills we didn't need to make deliberate noises to alert bears to our presence anymore, they just had to listen out for our laboured breathing. It was very hot and muggy, which didn't help, and the flies and mosquitoes were proving a bit of a nuisance. The path was easy to follow, it being an old and narrow road (I can't imagine why people used to drive down there, it was a real switchback and hilly path). After a while we broke out of the trees and into some open ground with long grass... but still no bears.
I won't big this walk up, it's only 2.5 miles each way, but in the heat of the day, and with both of us nervous about bear contact, it was far enough as a starter. I would like to have done more and gone further with an experienced trail person, but for just the two of us it was enough. We both had a real sense of achievement when, after about an hour and twenty minutes, we arrived at St. Elias Lake. It's not a big lake, but it's quite pretty, and we'd made it our own as a result of walking here through a proper Yukon trail.
It didn't take us as long to get back to the car, and that cursed grouse wasn't there anymore (maybe a bear ate it). We headed off to try and find the Million Dollar Waterfall that Mrs. Watson had told us about, but there were no signposts for ages, so we gave up. Having checked on the internet later, it seems we didn't travel quite far enough. Instead we headed back to Kathleen Lake again, and ate our lunch for the second time in what is now our chair. The air wasn't as clear today, it seemed thicker and more prone to storms, even though it was quite sunny.
From there we came back to Haines Junction and down to the Bakery for a cinamon bun and a beer. While we were sitting outside on the decking, the owner of the Bakery, Boyd Campbell, came out to talk to us. This has been a recurring feature of the Yukon, people just want to have a chat with you, find out where you're from, ask a little about you and tell you a little about themselves. Boyd told us he was originally from Ontario, and when I asked him why he'd come up to Haines Junction he said, "I just got in a truck and kept on driving until I found somewhere I liked". A carpenter rather than a baker, he built the Village Bakery himself, then employed a couple of bakers. As a business it's done really well in the 25 years he's been running it, but he wants to sell up now and is struggling to find a buyer. He told us that the Holland America tours, which account for substantial business in the town, look like they're going to be moving to flights rather than coach tours, and will miss out Haines Junction.
It all sounds rather sad for a town that's got such a lot going for it in terms of hiking and walking. I asked Boyd if the town wanted us to tell people about the Yukon, or if the Yukoners would rather it be kept a secret, he said, "feel free to tell everyone!" So be told.
Following that we sat out reading for a while, then went over to the Northern Lights Restaurant again. We've eaten there most nights because the food is quite good, the waitress is really friendly, and the only night we ate somewhere else we weren't that impressed.
Just one full day left in Haines Junction, and the weather looks like it's going to hold out for us, which is good as we've got a couple more places we want to visit.
After a breakfast of Alpen and the last slices of Mrs. Watson's homemade bread toasted and slathered in the odd white butter they have here, we took off down the Haines Highway again, this time past Kathleen Lake and past the Rock Glacier. Eventually we saw the sign for the St. Elias Lake Trail pull-out (lay-by), and turned into it. There was no one else there, not even a Holland America coach. It's things like this that remind you that, even during the tourist season, most of the Yukon is still pretty empty. You start to wonder if you should have let someone know where you are going.
But this trail is described as easy, following an old road, good for a child's first backpacking experience, and only taking a few hours at most. I left our Village Bakery sandwiches in the car, not wanting bears to smell the food on me (they would just have to smell me as food), and then, having liberally sprayed ourselves with insect repellent, we headed into the woods.
Not far in we came upon our first wild life experience of the day; a cute and fluffy chick of some sort, fluttering its way up into a tree. We watched for a while, then noticed a parent bird at the base of the tree. I think it was a Spruce Grouse, it might have been a Ruffed Grouse. It studied us, watching warily, then fluttered its wings a few times. Suddenly a second chick flew out of the undergrowth, and when we pointed and went, "ooh look", as you do, the parent bird went nuts. It puffed out its neck feathers and wafted its wings, then ran at me, clucking. To be honest it scared the crap out of me, which doesn't bode well if we ever encounter a bear under similar circumstances. We both jumped backwards, and the bird kept coming, then started circling, protecting its young. Thirty feet in to the trail and we'd met the equivalent of Monty Python's Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. And we were without the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.
We eventually got past our adversary by running quickly up the trail shouting, "it's all right, we're going, we're going"... Intellectual and strong humans - 0, tiny little bird without opposable thumbs or discovery of fire - 1. Once out of danger (us, not the grouse), we settled into our pace. After a few short hills we didn't need to make deliberate noises to alert bears to our presence anymore, they just had to listen out for our laboured breathing. It was very hot and muggy, which didn't help, and the flies and mosquitoes were proving a bit of a nuisance. The path was easy to follow, it being an old and narrow road (I can't imagine why people used to drive down there, it was a real switchback and hilly path). After a while we broke out of the trees and into some open ground with long grass... but still no bears.
I won't big this walk up, it's only 2.5 miles each way, but in the heat of the day, and with both of us nervous about bear contact, it was far enough as a starter. I would like to have done more and gone further with an experienced trail person, but for just the two of us it was enough. We both had a real sense of achievement when, after about an hour and twenty minutes, we arrived at St. Elias Lake. It's not a big lake, but it's quite pretty, and we'd made it our own as a result of walking here through a proper Yukon trail.
It didn't take us as long to get back to the car, and that cursed grouse wasn't there anymore (maybe a bear ate it). We headed off to try and find the Million Dollar Waterfall that Mrs. Watson had told us about, but there were no signposts for ages, so we gave up. Having checked on the internet later, it seems we didn't travel quite far enough. Instead we headed back to Kathleen Lake again, and ate our lunch for the second time in what is now our chair. The air wasn't as clear today, it seemed thicker and more prone to storms, even though it was quite sunny.
From there we came back to Haines Junction and down to the Bakery for a cinamon bun and a beer. While we were sitting outside on the decking, the owner of the Bakery, Boyd Campbell, came out to talk to us. This has been a recurring feature of the Yukon, people just want to have a chat with you, find out where you're from, ask a little about you and tell you a little about themselves. Boyd told us he was originally from Ontario, and when I asked him why he'd come up to Haines Junction he said, "I just got in a truck and kept on driving until I found somewhere I liked". A carpenter rather than a baker, he built the Village Bakery himself, then employed a couple of bakers. As a business it's done really well in the 25 years he's been running it, but he wants to sell up now and is struggling to find a buyer. He told us that the Holland America tours, which account for substantial business in the town, look like they're going to be moving to flights rather than coach tours, and will miss out Haines Junction.
It all sounds rather sad for a town that's got such a lot going for it in terms of hiking and walking. I asked Boyd if the town wanted us to tell people about the Yukon, or if the Yukoners would rather it be kept a secret, he said, "feel free to tell everyone!" So be told.
Following that we sat out reading for a while, then went over to the Northern Lights Restaurant again. We've eaten there most nights because the food is quite good, the waitress is really friendly, and the only night we ate somewhere else we weren't that impressed.
Just one full day left in Haines Junction, and the weather looks like it's going to hold out for us, which is good as we've got a couple more places we want to visit.
Monday, 15 July 2013
Day 18 - Kathleen Lake
Today, after popping down to the Village Bakery to pick up some sandwiches and drinks for our lunch, we headed out along the Haines Highway towards our first of two planned excursions. This road, had we continued to follow it, would have brought us back to the US border once more, but instead, having stopped only once to photograph the pretty Quill Creek, after a little more than thirty miles we pulled into the car park for the Rock Glacier trailhead. There, brooding and silent, a Holland America coach: they'd beaten us once again.
We said hello to the only other person in the car park - a girl sitting in the open trunk of her vehicle and reading a book - and walked up to the trailhead (even just saying "trailhead" makes me feel like a real hiker). There we saw a sign advising of sturdy footwear because of the rocky terrain, so we returned to Arthur and replaced our sandals with trainers. By now Trunk Girl had stopped reading, and was instead eating cereal out of a bowl. She wished us a good walk.
The trail was mostly covered in a boardwalk until we got to the edge of the rock glacier itself. No one - not even wikipedia - quite knows how a rock glacier forms. As I could best understand it from the interpretive boards along the trail, it's like an ice glacier with rocks in from which all the ice has melted and left the rocks in the formation of the original glacier. A glacial skeleton, if you will. Not far up the trail we met a man coming down (Trunk Girl's companion?), and then as we started to climb the stairs to the rock glacier we met the Holland America people on their way back to the coach. There weren't so many of them as we'd seen before, and they seemed quite an enthusiastic bunch, so maybe I'm guilty of misjudging them.
On our own now, we climbed off the wooden staircase and onto the stone path through the terminal moraine (i.e. very end) of the glacier. It was a weird sight, almost like someone had built the whole thing out of millions upon millions of bricks. I've never seen anything quite like it before. At the end of the constructed path is an invitation to go further on up the mountainside, but there's no trail visible, and it was very steep, so we politely declined. Instead, we looked back over the way we had come: we had a terrific view of Dezadeash (pronounced DEZ-dee-ash) Lake, whence flows the river along which we walked yesterday.
Heading back down was harder on the ankles than coming up, but it wasn't too bad, and soon we were back in Arthur and retracing our steps to Kathleen Lake, our second destination of the day. The Holland America people were already there, being given a lesson on the edge of the lake by two enthusiastic girls about the difference between black bears and grizzly bears (me: "Ears, snout, claws, hump on the back, and a grizzly bear will kill you before it eats you"... the girls only mentioned the first four).
Kathleen Lake is spectacular. There is a small board-covered walk set up around the first quarter mile or so of the lake's edge, but you are invited to walk further if you would like and are able. We were both, and, taking note of the "you are in bear country" warning signs, we walked some way further around. And were glad that we had. Though the lake view when you arrive is indeed beautiful, it's only when you round the first corner at the end of the boardwalk that the lake's true character is revealed. To the left is the enormous King's Throne peak, and to the right of that is a mountain which I believe is called Kathleen Peak. Between the two is a gap giving a glimpse into the enormous expanse beyond, wherein lie glaciers, ice fields, and the St. Elias Mountains. My camera's telephoto lens barely picked up the detail; through binoculars the view was spectacular, great white peaks, angular and harsh, stretching out from the edge of the Yukon and into Alaska.
We ambled back to the boardwalk area, the odd fish throwing itself out of the lake to catch mosquitoes, and sat down on a bench, soaking up the warmth of the day. There we ate our lunch in the most picturesque and peaceful of locations. According to my guide book, some people (I've no idea which "some people" they are, but I suspect we all know people like them) are objecting that Kathleen Lake is becoming too well known, and therefore overpopulated with visitors. Including the Holland America coach load, I would say that no more than thirty people visited the lake while we were there. Given that Lake Louise in Alberta (and believe it or not there is a Louise Lake at the far end of Kathleen Lake) entertains 10,000 people per day during the peak season, and also given the fact that Kathleen Lake doesn't even have its own wiki page, and also given that I can't find out who Kathleen is or was and why she should have had a lake named after her, I think those "some people" need to re-evaluate things.
Sandra wanted to sit there all afternoon, and if we'd had books with us we might have. Instead we drove a little further down the Haines Highway looking for (but failing to find) a trailhead for another walk we have planned for tomorrow. After that, the temperature climbing, we drove back to Haines Junction, for we wanted to have a pastry on the deck of the Village Bakery. Arthur's external temperature sensor registered 30°C at one point, and by the time we got back the air was heavy and some dark clouds had gathered. I thought there was going to be a major storm, but only about 15 spots of rain fell, then the dark clouds moved on and it was baking hot and dry once more.
We had delicious pastries and a drink at the Bakery, then came back in the late afternoon sun, wishing life could be like this all the time.
It's so quiet. It's half past ten at night, still light, as I sit here on the decking of our Suite typing this, only the odd car engine in the distance a reminder that there are other people around. The noisiest things are the wind in the trees and the crazy howling birds they have around here.
I wonder where Holland America will beat us to tomorrow.
We said hello to the only other person in the car park - a girl sitting in the open trunk of her vehicle and reading a book - and walked up to the trailhead (even just saying "trailhead" makes me feel like a real hiker). There we saw a sign advising of sturdy footwear because of the rocky terrain, so we returned to Arthur and replaced our sandals with trainers. By now Trunk Girl had stopped reading, and was instead eating cereal out of a bowl. She wished us a good walk.
The trail was mostly covered in a boardwalk until we got to the edge of the rock glacier itself. No one - not even wikipedia - quite knows how a rock glacier forms. As I could best understand it from the interpretive boards along the trail, it's like an ice glacier with rocks in from which all the ice has melted and left the rocks in the formation of the original glacier. A glacial skeleton, if you will. Not far up the trail we met a man coming down (Trunk Girl's companion?), and then as we started to climb the stairs to the rock glacier we met the Holland America people on their way back to the coach. There weren't so many of them as we'd seen before, and they seemed quite an enthusiastic bunch, so maybe I'm guilty of misjudging them.
On our own now, we climbed off the wooden staircase and onto the stone path through the terminal moraine (i.e. very end) of the glacier. It was a weird sight, almost like someone had built the whole thing out of millions upon millions of bricks. I've never seen anything quite like it before. At the end of the constructed path is an invitation to go further on up the mountainside, but there's no trail visible, and it was very steep, so we politely declined. Instead, we looked back over the way we had come: we had a terrific view of Dezadeash (pronounced DEZ-dee-ash) Lake, whence flows the river along which we walked yesterday.
Heading back down was harder on the ankles than coming up, but it wasn't too bad, and soon we were back in Arthur and retracing our steps to Kathleen Lake, our second destination of the day. The Holland America people were already there, being given a lesson on the edge of the lake by two enthusiastic girls about the difference between black bears and grizzly bears (me: "Ears, snout, claws, hump on the back, and a grizzly bear will kill you before it eats you"... the girls only mentioned the first four).
Kathleen Lake is spectacular. There is a small board-covered walk set up around the first quarter mile or so of the lake's edge, but you are invited to walk further if you would like and are able. We were both, and, taking note of the "you are in bear country" warning signs, we walked some way further around. And were glad that we had. Though the lake view when you arrive is indeed beautiful, it's only when you round the first corner at the end of the boardwalk that the lake's true character is revealed. To the left is the enormous King's Throne peak, and to the right of that is a mountain which I believe is called Kathleen Peak. Between the two is a gap giving a glimpse into the enormous expanse beyond, wherein lie glaciers, ice fields, and the St. Elias Mountains. My camera's telephoto lens barely picked up the detail; through binoculars the view was spectacular, great white peaks, angular and harsh, stretching out from the edge of the Yukon and into Alaska.
We ambled back to the boardwalk area, the odd fish throwing itself out of the lake to catch mosquitoes, and sat down on a bench, soaking up the warmth of the day. There we ate our lunch in the most picturesque and peaceful of locations. According to my guide book, some people (I've no idea which "some people" they are, but I suspect we all know people like them) are objecting that Kathleen Lake is becoming too well known, and therefore overpopulated with visitors. Including the Holland America coach load, I would say that no more than thirty people visited the lake while we were there. Given that Lake Louise in Alberta (and believe it or not there is a Louise Lake at the far end of Kathleen Lake) entertains 10,000 people per day during the peak season, and also given the fact that Kathleen Lake doesn't even have its own wiki page, and also given that I can't find out who Kathleen is or was and why she should have had a lake named after her, I think those "some people" need to re-evaluate things.
Sandra wanted to sit there all afternoon, and if we'd had books with us we might have. Instead we drove a little further down the Haines Highway looking for (but failing to find) a trailhead for another walk we have planned for tomorrow. After that, the temperature climbing, we drove back to Haines Junction, for we wanted to have a pastry on the deck of the Village Bakery. Arthur's external temperature sensor registered 30°C at one point, and by the time we got back the air was heavy and some dark clouds had gathered. I thought there was going to be a major storm, but only about 15 spots of rain fell, then the dark clouds moved on and it was baking hot and dry once more.
We had delicious pastries and a drink at the Bakery, then came back in the late afternoon sun, wishing life could be like this all the time.
It's so quiet. It's half past ten at night, still light, as I sit here on the decking of our Suite typing this, only the odd car engine in the distance a reminder that there are other people around. The noisiest things are the wind in the trees and the crazy howling birds they have around here.
I wonder where Holland America will beat us to tomorrow.
Sunday, 14 July 2013
Day 17 - Haines Junction
Haines Junction is one of a number of small towns that didn't exist before the construction of the Alaska Highway and, like a lot of those towns, it was originally made of wood and burned down a couple of times before they cottoned on to the root cause. A second highway here connects the Alaska Highway to Haines in Alaska, hence the name of this town, Haines Junction. It's a town that, these days, relies on tourism for business, leaning heavily on the adjacent Kluane National Park. A major new visitor and cultural information centre was built here in 2011, but to the consternation of local residents it's only open from May to September, thus denying the town winter business which it badly needs.
I knew nothing about this town when I was planning this holiday. It seemed like a logical place to stop on our Klondike/Kluane loop, and would give us a chance to see some fantastic scenery and do some walking. Walking (not hiking, not yet anyway) is something I wanted to do to take advantage of the amount of weight I've lost over the last year (in real terms, equivalent to my combined checked in and hand luggage allowance for this holiday - how I used to walk around with that all the time I can't imagine). Prior to my diet, walking up the stairs was hard work, now I wanted to get out into the countryside, and Haines Junction seemed the place to do it. I bought a walking guide to the area by Vivien Lougheed, and picked out a few walks of no more than a couple of hours each on which I figured that Sandra would be able to keep up with me on her short little legs.
Our first stop this morning was the big and very modern visitor information centre. The Holland America people got there before us, two coachloads of them, and were poking and prodding exhibits in a disinterested fashion. It seems to be a hallmark of these people, where ever we've seen them they just seem to be waiting for it to be time to get back on the coach and go to the next place, where they can get off the coach and wait around to get back on the coach again. We waited until they'd all gone into a room where they were being shown a video about something, then picked up a couple of maps from the information desk, one being a walking tour of Haines Junction itself.
The walking tour is mentioned in my hiking guide, and it was one of the walks I'd always intended us to do, so, in the glorious sunshine and with the Auriol Range of mountains towering over the town to the west, we set off. To get to Point Of Interest Number 1 (the St. Elias Convention Centre) in the walking tour guide, we had to walk past Points Of Interest Number 21 (the Glacier View Motel, constructed of modular residences and "assorted orange crates" left over from the Haines Junction maintenance camp during the construction of the Alaska Highway), 18 (St. Christopher's Anglican Church), 19 (Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church, made out of a converted American army Quonset Hut) and 3 (the Old Fire Hall, now the Museum Of Nostalgia set up by a man with the unlikely name of Smokey Guttman - you have no idea how bummed I was that this place was closed). We arrived at the St. Elias Convention Centre just as two coaches, which had obviously skipped the fascinations of POIs 21, 18, 19 and 3, disgorged their contents of disgruntled Holland America tourists into the car park. They were in a surly mood, looking for food: a room had been set aside for them with sandwiches and drinks supplied, but many of them took several attempts to find it (indeed, some of them may still be looking).
The St. Elias Convention Centre had a feature on life in the Haines Junction area from pre-Gold Rush (it was an area the First Nation people travelled through on their long annual migrations) through to present day. We left while the Holland America people were still refuelling, and heading on to POI Number 4, Pugwash's Place. This is a cabin previously owned by Fraser Pollard (now deceased) - from Pugwash, Nova Scotia - since the 1970s. Mr. Pollard would "scavenge treasures" from the local dump in order to supplement his income. When the village bought a compactor for the dump as part of a waste management project, the wily Mr. Pollard sought and gained employment... as the waste compactor operator.
The Holland America people were missing all this great stuff.
From here we made our way to POI Number 8. This consists of a number of what look like planks raised up high above the ground on other planks, and when I first saw them yesterday I bet Sandra any amount of money she would like to name that they had at one point been used for hanging and drying salmon. I was completely wrong, but never more delighted when I found out their true use. POI Number 8 is the Haines Junction Swallow Haven. Anyone who has had swallows nesting in the eaves of their house knows what a nuisance these birds can be. To overcome this, the people of Haines Junction built a series of raised false eaves for the swallows: the birds moved in by the hundreds, with the added bonus that each bird devours enormous quantities of the local mosquito population, thus reducing the need for pesticide control. Simple and brilliant.
From there we looped back up towards the village, taking a photo op at the Antler Signpost (POI Number 12), before ending up at the Village Bakery and Deli. This pleasant log cabin has plenty of outdoor picnic seating, and serves up freshly made bread, pizza, sandwiches, wraps, panninis, etc. We sat in the sun with our chosen lunches, and lapped up the good weather for a while.
After that we came back to our Suite, changing into trainers rather than sandals, and headed out for a walk around the Dezadeash Trail (the Dezadeash being the river that runs to the south of the town). This, according to my guide books, is an easy walk, just 90 minutes or so, and in the heat of the afternoon it was all we wanted. A warning sign at the start of the trail tells you that you're in bear country now, and another board warns ominously, "what you see isn't the same as what sees you". Suitably terrified, we set off, clumping and coughing and making a lot of noise (so that the bears would know where to find us).
It was a good walk, nice to be out in the open after three days of virtually continuous driving. There were a lot of mosquitoes and flies though, it was a good job we were both sprayed up with insect repellant. We saw three squirrels and a prairie dog, and when we got to the end of the walk we had an ice cream for a treat. Then, because it was late afternoon, we came back and sat out on the deck for a while, listening to weird bird calls and reading (or in my case, pulling together pictures for the Flickr site).
We still have a few days left of our holiday. I'd thought about booking a flight over to the glaciers and mountain ranges beyond the mountains we can see bordering this tiny town, but to be honest we're both kinda "full up" with trips and organising complicated days out. We just want to take it easy for these last days.
And of course, get some more walking in... I didn't buy that compass for nothing.
I knew nothing about this town when I was planning this holiday. It seemed like a logical place to stop on our Klondike/Kluane loop, and would give us a chance to see some fantastic scenery and do some walking. Walking (not hiking, not yet anyway) is something I wanted to do to take advantage of the amount of weight I've lost over the last year (in real terms, equivalent to my combined checked in and hand luggage allowance for this holiday - how I used to walk around with that all the time I can't imagine). Prior to my diet, walking up the stairs was hard work, now I wanted to get out into the countryside, and Haines Junction seemed the place to do it. I bought a walking guide to the area by Vivien Lougheed, and picked out a few walks of no more than a couple of hours each on which I figured that Sandra would be able to keep up with me on her short little legs.
Our first stop this morning was the big and very modern visitor information centre. The Holland America people got there before us, two coachloads of them, and were poking and prodding exhibits in a disinterested fashion. It seems to be a hallmark of these people, where ever we've seen them they just seem to be waiting for it to be time to get back on the coach and go to the next place, where they can get off the coach and wait around to get back on the coach again. We waited until they'd all gone into a room where they were being shown a video about something, then picked up a couple of maps from the information desk, one being a walking tour of Haines Junction itself.
The walking tour is mentioned in my hiking guide, and it was one of the walks I'd always intended us to do, so, in the glorious sunshine and with the Auriol Range of mountains towering over the town to the west, we set off. To get to Point Of Interest Number 1 (the St. Elias Convention Centre) in the walking tour guide, we had to walk past Points Of Interest Number 21 (the Glacier View Motel, constructed of modular residences and "assorted orange crates" left over from the Haines Junction maintenance camp during the construction of the Alaska Highway), 18 (St. Christopher's Anglican Church), 19 (Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church, made out of a converted American army Quonset Hut) and 3 (the Old Fire Hall, now the Museum Of Nostalgia set up by a man with the unlikely name of Smokey Guttman - you have no idea how bummed I was that this place was closed). We arrived at the St. Elias Convention Centre just as two coaches, which had obviously skipped the fascinations of POIs 21, 18, 19 and 3, disgorged their contents of disgruntled Holland America tourists into the car park. They were in a surly mood, looking for food: a room had been set aside for them with sandwiches and drinks supplied, but many of them took several attempts to find it (indeed, some of them may still be looking).
The St. Elias Convention Centre had a feature on life in the Haines Junction area from pre-Gold Rush (it was an area the First Nation people travelled through on their long annual migrations) through to present day. We left while the Holland America people were still refuelling, and heading on to POI Number 4, Pugwash's Place. This is a cabin previously owned by Fraser Pollard (now deceased) - from Pugwash, Nova Scotia - since the 1970s. Mr. Pollard would "scavenge treasures" from the local dump in order to supplement his income. When the village bought a compactor for the dump as part of a waste management project, the wily Mr. Pollard sought and gained employment... as the waste compactor operator.
The Holland America people were missing all this great stuff.
From here we made our way to POI Number 8. This consists of a number of what look like planks raised up high above the ground on other planks, and when I first saw them yesterday I bet Sandra any amount of money she would like to name that they had at one point been used for hanging and drying salmon. I was completely wrong, but never more delighted when I found out their true use. POI Number 8 is the Haines Junction Swallow Haven. Anyone who has had swallows nesting in the eaves of their house knows what a nuisance these birds can be. To overcome this, the people of Haines Junction built a series of raised false eaves for the swallows: the birds moved in by the hundreds, with the added bonus that each bird devours enormous quantities of the local mosquito population, thus reducing the need for pesticide control. Simple and brilliant.
From there we looped back up towards the village, taking a photo op at the Antler Signpost (POI Number 12), before ending up at the Village Bakery and Deli. This pleasant log cabin has plenty of outdoor picnic seating, and serves up freshly made bread, pizza, sandwiches, wraps, panninis, etc. We sat in the sun with our chosen lunches, and lapped up the good weather for a while.
After that we came back to our Suite, changing into trainers rather than sandals, and headed out for a walk around the Dezadeash Trail (the Dezadeash being the river that runs to the south of the town). This, according to my guide books, is an easy walk, just 90 minutes or so, and in the heat of the afternoon it was all we wanted. A warning sign at the start of the trail tells you that you're in bear country now, and another board warns ominously, "what you see isn't the same as what sees you". Suitably terrified, we set off, clumping and coughing and making a lot of noise (so that the bears would know where to find us).
It was a good walk, nice to be out in the open after three days of virtually continuous driving. There were a lot of mosquitoes and flies though, it was a good job we were both sprayed up with insect repellant. We saw three squirrels and a prairie dog, and when we got to the end of the walk we had an ice cream for a treat. Then, because it was late afternoon, we came back and sat out on the deck for a while, listening to weird bird calls and reading (or in my case, pulling together pictures for the Flickr site).
We still have a few days left of our holiday. I'd thought about booking a flight over to the glaciers and mountain ranges beyond the mountains we can see bordering this tiny town, but to be honest we're both kinda "full up" with trips and organising complicated days out. We just want to take it easy for these last days.
And of course, get some more walking in... I didn't buy that compass for nothing.
Saturday, 13 July 2013
Day 16 - The Alaska Highway
The Alaska Highway was built during World War II as a means of connecting mainland USA with Alaska. This was felt necessary for two reasons; firstly it enabled the shipment of supplies up through Canada into Alaska and over to America's then allies the Russians, via Siberia, and secondly the shipment of troops to protect Alaska and Canada should the Japanese invade via the Alaskan Aleutian Islands (Japan actually did attempt this in 1942, but with no success). Construction of the 1700 mile road began in March 1942, and was completed by the end of October of the same year, the northern linkup of the road crews being at mile 1202, Beaver Creek (see, there was a point to us staying there). Interestingly, a lot of the infrastructure developed for the movement of large amounts of people and supplies during the Yukon Gold Rush was also used for the construction of the Alaska Highway.
The section of the Highway that we were due to drive today runs from Beaver Creek to Haines Junction, a distance of 180 miles. It might have been further in 1942; the Alaska Highway today is over 300 miles shorter than when it was first constructed, as it has been straightened out a lot over the intervening years. Polly Evans, who wrote the Bradt guide to the Yukon without which this holiday would have been infinitely more impossible to plan, begins her Haines Junction to Beaver Creek section on the Alaska Highway with the words, "Oh you lucky, lucky thing". That sets an expectation in a man's mind.
It was bright sunshine when we checked out of our basic accommodation at the 1202 Motor Inn (basic it may have been, but I had the best night's sleep there that I've had for the whole holiday so far). We drove down to the Beaver Creek Visitor Information Centre, where we listened to the two attendants there telling us terrifying bear-encounter stories until we made good our escape. Heading south down the Alaska Highway we could again see the snow-topped Saint Elias Mountains to our right, marching into the distance as if they were leading to Gondor: with the morning sun shining on them, they were even more spectacular than yesterday.
The road was proving to be an interesting drive; once again a mix of surfaces, sometimes paved and sometimes gravel. In its Yukon stretch, the Alaska Highway mostly follows the Shakwak Trench, and the eponymous Shakwak Project is an agreement between the US and Canada to maintain this stretch of road... with the resultant construction and variable road surfaces. It keeps a driver on his toes.
We passed over White River, which wasn't really a river at that point but more of a sandy bed - every year, when the snow melts, this river deposits millions of tons of sediment into the Yukon - and were approaching a bridge before a wide place in the road called Cook's Koidern River Lodge, when something bounded out in front of us. My first thought, and Sandra's, was that is was a fox or even a wolf, but as we got closer I said, "that's a lynx". We couldn't get a decent photograph of it other than its backside, but it was obviously a big cat of some sort. We slowed right down and it cut across the road and into the undergrowth, out of sight.
Still moving slowly, we drove over the bridge and further along the road, but we didn't see the cat again. Your heart beats faster when you see something like that, especially something you've not seen before. Your senses come alive, the day seems brighter and more exciting. And it was in that state that, just a mile or so further along the road, we got our first sighting of Pickhandle Lake. The bear-story ladies at the Beaver Creek Visitor Centre had told us of a family of ducks at this lake which had taken to approaching visitors in order to be fed on bread. Um... we're from England, we've been feeding bread to ducks since we were children, it's not something we find exciting any more, and I had no intention of stopping at Pickhandle Lake.
But I just couldn't help myself pulling into the side of the road as the lake came into view. Maybe we were just lucky with the time of day, the angle of the sun, the lack of breeze to ruffle the surface of the lake, I don't know, but it knocked everything we've seen so far into a cocked hat. Lake Louise, when I first saw it in 2008, became the benchmark by which I measure the beauty of a view: this easily equalled it, and bettered it in the fact that there were no other people around, just the two of us. I've used a lot of superlatives over the last few days to try and describe what we've seen in the Yukon, but when, a few minutes later, another vehicle stopped and the driver got out, the only thing I could think to say was, "it's quite something, isn't it?" He responded, "it sure is beautiful".
We drove on another mile to the Pickhandle Lake rest area (the ducks were there - actually a female mallard and a number of ducklings), and again I was moved beyond words by the spectacle. Eventually I said to Sandra, "this is it, I don't want to go anywhere else".
Other people started to arrive, and rather than have the moment spoiled, we reluctantly moved on. Further down the road we came upon a tiny car-gaggle. It's the first we've seen since we've been in the Yukon (probably because there aren't enough people here to make a proper gaggle). We slowed down, and someone told us there was a black bear up on the side of the hill. There was too, going about his business, and his business was - as it always is for bears - eating. We watched him for a while, but he stubbornly refused to pose in a photogenic way, just continued gnawing at leaves and berries and grass, oblivious to the attention he was drawing.
Finally we tore ourselves away again, heading for Burwash Landing. I wasn't expecting anything much of note here, except maybe a decent view at which to stop and enjoy the sandwiches we'd bought at the 1202 Motor Inn, but there wasn't even that. We did visit their Kluane Museum of Natural History, where they had a stuffed Canadian Lynx, which, when compared with our photos of the one we'd seen earlier confirmed the sighting. We also learned that the sighting of such a creature in daylight and at this time of year was quite rare, which made it all the more special.
Pausing only to photograph the largest gold pan in the world, we moved on from Burwash Landing to Destruction Bay, so named because strong winds there blew down structures during the construction of the Alaska Highway. If there was little at Burwash Landing, there was less at Destruction Bay, so, having eaten our lunch in a rest area, we drove on.
Kluane Lake was on our left now, the largest lake in the Yukon. The road pulled teasingly away from it, then swung back and travelled close to it, giving us stunning views of not just the lake but the Ruby Range mountains beyond, and the Saint Elias Mountains curving against its southern flank. We kept stopping to take pictures as each bend in the road seemed to bring more and more amazing views.
But the best was saved until last.
The road sweeps round in a long, slow arc, similar to those we've seen on the Icefield Parkway, drifting over a gargantuan landscape, letting you know how dwarfed you are by the distances and size of the scenery. Then it curves around the bottom of the lake, and presents you with a view of the journey you have just undertaken; the mountains to the left, the lake itself stretching out in front of you, the enormity of the oddly named Sheep Mountain off to one side, dwarfing everything else. It's jaw-dropping. It was one of those moments when we both stepped out of the car and had to move apart from each other to spend some time alone with our thoughts and with the impossible views before us.
I debated not even writing this part up in the blog; I didn't want to share it, I don't want people to know about it, I don't want people tramping up there to be herded into huge car parks by slick attendants, I don't want there to be viewing platforms like they have at Lake Louise. Never have I been so moved by a place. The Yukon finally got to me today.
I don't know how long we stayed there. I do know that starting the car engine took a physical act of will. Leaving that place was like leaving a lover, that's the only way I can describe it. It's corny, but all I could think of was a phrase from The Lord of the Rings, where Gimli leaves the land of Lorien: "I have taken my worst wound at this parting, having looked my last upon that which is fairest."
So, on to Haines Junction.
Another hour of driving, for we had dillied and dallied on the way, and a journey that should have taken just a few hours had taken nearly six. We tumbled into a sunny Haines Junction at 4 pm, and followed the street map in my Bradt guide (there aren't many roads in this town) to the place I'd booked as a last resort when my other Haines Junction booking fell through. There waiting for us by the Aspen Place Suite was Mrs. Erni Watson, the most welcoming and chirpy person we could have hoped for. The Suite is unlike anything we've ever had in Canada: it is in fact a small cottage, with a kitchen, dining area, sitting area, bathroom and bedroom. There's even a deck outside on which to sit in the sun (and we have, and will again).
Supplies were one thing we were short of though, so Erni told us where we could get some milk and cereal (she'd made us some homemade bread for tomorrow, plus there is coffee and butter and juice and other staples), and because she was going to the liquor store herself she gave us a lift down there where we picked up some wine and Yukon Red beer. We walked back from there; everywhere is walking distance in Haines Junction.
The town is smaller than I thought it would be, and the main food store has recently closed down (is it right that the food store closes down but the liquor store is doing great business?). We ate tonight in the Northern Lights restaurant. You wouldn't know it was the Northern Lights restaurant because the sign's fallen off, but it's associated with the Alcan Motel which I remember when I was looking for a place to book, and my gosh I enjoyed the chicken curry and a couple of beers.
Tomorrow we'll head over to the Visitor Centre to see what's what, but I've got some walks planned. They're easy ones, don't worry.
The section of the Highway that we were due to drive today runs from Beaver Creek to Haines Junction, a distance of 180 miles. It might have been further in 1942; the Alaska Highway today is over 300 miles shorter than when it was first constructed, as it has been straightened out a lot over the intervening years. Polly Evans, who wrote the Bradt guide to the Yukon without which this holiday would have been infinitely more impossible to plan, begins her Haines Junction to Beaver Creek section on the Alaska Highway with the words, "Oh you lucky, lucky thing". That sets an expectation in a man's mind.
It was bright sunshine when we checked out of our basic accommodation at the 1202 Motor Inn (basic it may have been, but I had the best night's sleep there that I've had for the whole holiday so far). We drove down to the Beaver Creek Visitor Information Centre, where we listened to the two attendants there telling us terrifying bear-encounter stories until we made good our escape. Heading south down the Alaska Highway we could again see the snow-topped Saint Elias Mountains to our right, marching into the distance as if they were leading to Gondor: with the morning sun shining on them, they were even more spectacular than yesterday.
The road was proving to be an interesting drive; once again a mix of surfaces, sometimes paved and sometimes gravel. In its Yukon stretch, the Alaska Highway mostly follows the Shakwak Trench, and the eponymous Shakwak Project is an agreement between the US and Canada to maintain this stretch of road... with the resultant construction and variable road surfaces. It keeps a driver on his toes.
We passed over White River, which wasn't really a river at that point but more of a sandy bed - every year, when the snow melts, this river deposits millions of tons of sediment into the Yukon - and were approaching a bridge before a wide place in the road called Cook's Koidern River Lodge, when something bounded out in front of us. My first thought, and Sandra's, was that is was a fox or even a wolf, but as we got closer I said, "that's a lynx". We couldn't get a decent photograph of it other than its backside, but it was obviously a big cat of some sort. We slowed right down and it cut across the road and into the undergrowth, out of sight.
Still moving slowly, we drove over the bridge and further along the road, but we didn't see the cat again. Your heart beats faster when you see something like that, especially something you've not seen before. Your senses come alive, the day seems brighter and more exciting. And it was in that state that, just a mile or so further along the road, we got our first sighting of Pickhandle Lake. The bear-story ladies at the Beaver Creek Visitor Centre had told us of a family of ducks at this lake which had taken to approaching visitors in order to be fed on bread. Um... we're from England, we've been feeding bread to ducks since we were children, it's not something we find exciting any more, and I had no intention of stopping at Pickhandle Lake.
But I just couldn't help myself pulling into the side of the road as the lake came into view. Maybe we were just lucky with the time of day, the angle of the sun, the lack of breeze to ruffle the surface of the lake, I don't know, but it knocked everything we've seen so far into a cocked hat. Lake Louise, when I first saw it in 2008, became the benchmark by which I measure the beauty of a view: this easily equalled it, and bettered it in the fact that there were no other people around, just the two of us. I've used a lot of superlatives over the last few days to try and describe what we've seen in the Yukon, but when, a few minutes later, another vehicle stopped and the driver got out, the only thing I could think to say was, "it's quite something, isn't it?" He responded, "it sure is beautiful".
We drove on another mile to the Pickhandle Lake rest area (the ducks were there - actually a female mallard and a number of ducklings), and again I was moved beyond words by the spectacle. Eventually I said to Sandra, "this is it, I don't want to go anywhere else".
Other people started to arrive, and rather than have the moment spoiled, we reluctantly moved on. Further down the road we came upon a tiny car-gaggle. It's the first we've seen since we've been in the Yukon (probably because there aren't enough people here to make a proper gaggle). We slowed down, and someone told us there was a black bear up on the side of the hill. There was too, going about his business, and his business was - as it always is for bears - eating. We watched him for a while, but he stubbornly refused to pose in a photogenic way, just continued gnawing at leaves and berries and grass, oblivious to the attention he was drawing.
Finally we tore ourselves away again, heading for Burwash Landing. I wasn't expecting anything much of note here, except maybe a decent view at which to stop and enjoy the sandwiches we'd bought at the 1202 Motor Inn, but there wasn't even that. We did visit their Kluane Museum of Natural History, where they had a stuffed Canadian Lynx, which, when compared with our photos of the one we'd seen earlier confirmed the sighting. We also learned that the sighting of such a creature in daylight and at this time of year was quite rare, which made it all the more special.
Pausing only to photograph the largest gold pan in the world, we moved on from Burwash Landing to Destruction Bay, so named because strong winds there blew down structures during the construction of the Alaska Highway. If there was little at Burwash Landing, there was less at Destruction Bay, so, having eaten our lunch in a rest area, we drove on.
Kluane Lake was on our left now, the largest lake in the Yukon. The road pulled teasingly away from it, then swung back and travelled close to it, giving us stunning views of not just the lake but the Ruby Range mountains beyond, and the Saint Elias Mountains curving against its southern flank. We kept stopping to take pictures as each bend in the road seemed to bring more and more amazing views.
But the best was saved until last.
The road sweeps round in a long, slow arc, similar to those we've seen on the Icefield Parkway, drifting over a gargantuan landscape, letting you know how dwarfed you are by the distances and size of the scenery. Then it curves around the bottom of the lake, and presents you with a view of the journey you have just undertaken; the mountains to the left, the lake itself stretching out in front of you, the enormity of the oddly named Sheep Mountain off to one side, dwarfing everything else. It's jaw-dropping. It was one of those moments when we both stepped out of the car and had to move apart from each other to spend some time alone with our thoughts and with the impossible views before us.
I debated not even writing this part up in the blog; I didn't want to share it, I don't want people to know about it, I don't want people tramping up there to be herded into huge car parks by slick attendants, I don't want there to be viewing platforms like they have at Lake Louise. Never have I been so moved by a place. The Yukon finally got to me today.
I don't know how long we stayed there. I do know that starting the car engine took a physical act of will. Leaving that place was like leaving a lover, that's the only way I can describe it. It's corny, but all I could think of was a phrase from The Lord of the Rings, where Gimli leaves the land of Lorien: "I have taken my worst wound at this parting, having looked my last upon that which is fairest."
So, on to Haines Junction.
Another hour of driving, for we had dillied and dallied on the way, and a journey that should have taken just a few hours had taken nearly six. We tumbled into a sunny Haines Junction at 4 pm, and followed the street map in my Bradt guide (there aren't many roads in this town) to the place I'd booked as a last resort when my other Haines Junction booking fell through. There waiting for us by the Aspen Place Suite was Mrs. Erni Watson, the most welcoming and chirpy person we could have hoped for. The Suite is unlike anything we've ever had in Canada: it is in fact a small cottage, with a kitchen, dining area, sitting area, bathroom and bedroom. There's even a deck outside on which to sit in the sun (and we have, and will again).
Supplies were one thing we were short of though, so Erni told us where we could get some milk and cereal (she'd made us some homemade bread for tomorrow, plus there is coffee and butter and juice and other staples), and because she was going to the liquor store herself she gave us a lift down there where we picked up some wine and Yukon Red beer. We walked back from there; everywhere is walking distance in Haines Junction.
The town is smaller than I thought it would be, and the main food store has recently closed down (is it right that the food store closes down but the liquor store is doing great business?). We ate tonight in the Northern Lights restaurant. You wouldn't know it was the Northern Lights restaurant because the sign's fallen off, but it's associated with the Alcan Motel which I remember when I was looking for a place to book, and my gosh I enjoyed the chicken curry and a couple of beers.
Tomorrow we'll head over to the Visitor Centre to see what's what, but I've got some walks planned. They're easy ones, don't worry.
Friday, 12 July 2013
Day 15 - The Top Of The World Highway
I'd always known that today was going to be a bit of a slog. It's almost 270 miles from Dawson City in a long arc round to Beaver Creek, which doesn't sound too far, but I knew the road wasn't going to be an easy one. There were two border crossings, from Canada into the USA in the morning, and then from the USA back into Canada later on in the day, having traversed the Alaska stage. But other than going back down through Whitehorse, making the journey over 400 miles, there's no realistic way of getting around to Haines Junction, which is our destination for the last part of our holiday.
What intrigued me when I was planning this part of the trip was the name of the road we were going to be driving on; it's Highway 9, but they call it The Top Of The World Highway. What an evocative name, how could we not take it?
We caught the ferry that operates daily from downtown Dawson across the Yukon River. The road climbs quickly, leaving the small town far behind and giving breathtaking views of the river valley below. Soon the road surface becomes unpaved, like the Dempster Highway, but it's easy enough to drive on if you take it steady. The views from the road are staggering as you look out over the Ogilvie Mountains to the north, and the Klondike Plateau and the Dawson Range to the south. There is, however, a distinct problem in photographing these brilliant views, because there are always trees in the way! The road takes you up ever higher until you are riding a backbone ridge (there's probably a geological name for this) on the top of the mountains, and you understand why the road gets its name. Either side of you it seems the world stretches away forever, as if you can see to the ends of the earth.
After a while we got stuck behind some RVs. We've seen them a lot on our Canadian holidays, and usually you can get past them easy enough, but on this road there are few passing opportunities; you just have to grin and bear it... well, bear it anyway. Soon enough they pulled into a rest area, and we were on our way again.
Our first stop was the customs post on the US/Canadian border. We got through here okay, thanks to the green waivers Billy Belushi had stapled into our passports in Skagway a lifetime ago, and were back in Alaska. Here the road became awful. Really dreadful. The Americans seemed to be digging most of it up. It was as bad as, if not worse than, the road up Keno Hill; poor Arthur was taking a right beating.
Thankfully relief came in the shape of the crazy town of Chicken, Alaska. When researching this holiday I found the place, and was barely able to believe it existed. As most towns are in this part of the world, it's only tiny, and grew up around a mining community; indeed, there's another of those huge dredges here. Originally the town was going to be called Ptarmigan because of the ubiquity of said bird in the region, but none of the miners could spell "ptarmigan", so they called it Chicken instead. This is really true. Everything there is chicken-related. They've just gone bonkers with the chicken motif, even serving a chicken liqueur; thankfully I was driving, so couldn't partake.
We grabbed a chicken and mayo sandwich to go (we've been to a place called Chicken and we've been to a place called Mayo, so it seemed appropriate), and set off, conscious of the fact that we still had a fair distance to travel, and that the border crossings close at 8 pm (that's Alaskan time; they close at 9 pm Canada time, but we were utterly confused at this point as to which border crossings were working to which time zone). Just out of Chicken we came upon a lone moose, tromping about in a pool, lazily gulping down weeds. They're ugly beasts, but so huge and magnificent to watch... from a distance; moose kill more people than bears do.
We carried on until we found a rest area, and ate our sandwiches (along with some fabulous potato salad they'd given us), then carried on our way. The sun was out, the temperature, even in Alaska, even this high up in the mountains, was in the high teens and even hit the twenties at one point. I was starting to watch the fuel gauge, wanting to top up with fuel at Tetlin Junction where the road we were on (now called the Taylor Highway) joins the Alaska Highway. The problem was, when we got to Tetlin Junction, I couldn't see a gas station anywhere.
I was working out mpg in my head, trying to calculate against the "kilometres left" on Arthur's readout (the Americans work in miles, the Canadians in kms), when to my left I saw something which at first I thought was a dog, then realised was in fact a small black bear. Sandra spotted it too, "ooh-ooh"ing and reaching for her camera. We slowed down and watched the fellow as he eyed the road from the safety of the long grass. I'm no bear expert, but I'd say he was either in his first or second summer, probably his second. I couldn't see a mother bear around, so he could have been on his own (he could also have been a she).
He trotted up to the edge of the road and started to walk along it, both of us videoing and photographing frantically, while trying to enjoy the moment; it was, after all, the first bear of this holiday. Then another vehicle came down the road in the opposite direction, and the bear slipped back into the undergrowth. We waited a while, but he didn't come back out.
We started off again. I reckoned we would have about 30 km of spare fuel in the tank if we had to go all the way to Beaver Creek without finding a gas station. Just to be sure, I knocked the air con off. Well, every little helps. We stopped a few more times for photo ops, and just to look at the staggering views (because most of the time they were just too big to photograph). The Kluane Ranges started to come into view, and behind them the Saint Elias Mountains, and behind THEM... well, it was difficult to tell where the snow-topped mountains ended and the distant clouds began.
At a tiny place called Northway, population 71, there was a gas station and we filled up, then headed down the last few miles of Alaska and over the Canadian border... where the road turned awful again. The Canadians are revamping this section of the Alaska Highway, and we had to endure about ten miles of gravel, construction and potholes before finally reaching a paved road again. There it was just a few miles to the Canadian customs post (where Jim Joel's green US visa waivers were unceremoniously removed from our passports), and then a final couple of miles to our accommodation for the night, the 1202 Motor Inn at Beaver Creek. It gets its name because when it was built it was at mile 1202 on the Alaska Highway, but the road has changed a lot since those days, and now it's at mile 1169. Or it would be if the Canadians measured things in miles, so actually it's at km 1935. Whatever, it's got a big plastic polar bear over the door, and it's quiet and got a comfortable bed, which is what we need after our long but satisfying road trip.
What intrigued me when I was planning this part of the trip was the name of the road we were going to be driving on; it's Highway 9, but they call it The Top Of The World Highway. What an evocative name, how could we not take it?
We caught the ferry that operates daily from downtown Dawson across the Yukon River. The road climbs quickly, leaving the small town far behind and giving breathtaking views of the river valley below. Soon the road surface becomes unpaved, like the Dempster Highway, but it's easy enough to drive on if you take it steady. The views from the road are staggering as you look out over the Ogilvie Mountains to the north, and the Klondike Plateau and the Dawson Range to the south. There is, however, a distinct problem in photographing these brilliant views, because there are always trees in the way! The road takes you up ever higher until you are riding a backbone ridge (there's probably a geological name for this) on the top of the mountains, and you understand why the road gets its name. Either side of you it seems the world stretches away forever, as if you can see to the ends of the earth.
After a while we got stuck behind some RVs. We've seen them a lot on our Canadian holidays, and usually you can get past them easy enough, but on this road there are few passing opportunities; you just have to grin and bear it... well, bear it anyway. Soon enough they pulled into a rest area, and we were on our way again.
Our first stop was the customs post on the US/Canadian border. We got through here okay, thanks to the green waivers Billy Belushi had stapled into our passports in Skagway a lifetime ago, and were back in Alaska. Here the road became awful. Really dreadful. The Americans seemed to be digging most of it up. It was as bad as, if not worse than, the road up Keno Hill; poor Arthur was taking a right beating.
Thankfully relief came in the shape of the crazy town of Chicken, Alaska. When researching this holiday I found the place, and was barely able to believe it existed. As most towns are in this part of the world, it's only tiny, and grew up around a mining community; indeed, there's another of those huge dredges here. Originally the town was going to be called Ptarmigan because of the ubiquity of said bird in the region, but none of the miners could spell "ptarmigan", so they called it Chicken instead. This is really true. Everything there is chicken-related. They've just gone bonkers with the chicken motif, even serving a chicken liqueur; thankfully I was driving, so couldn't partake.
We grabbed a chicken and mayo sandwich to go (we've been to a place called Chicken and we've been to a place called Mayo, so it seemed appropriate), and set off, conscious of the fact that we still had a fair distance to travel, and that the border crossings close at 8 pm (that's Alaskan time; they close at 9 pm Canada time, but we were utterly confused at this point as to which border crossings were working to which time zone). Just out of Chicken we came upon a lone moose, tromping about in a pool, lazily gulping down weeds. They're ugly beasts, but so huge and magnificent to watch... from a distance; moose kill more people than bears do.
We carried on until we found a rest area, and ate our sandwiches (along with some fabulous potato salad they'd given us), then carried on our way. The sun was out, the temperature, even in Alaska, even this high up in the mountains, was in the high teens and even hit the twenties at one point. I was starting to watch the fuel gauge, wanting to top up with fuel at Tetlin Junction where the road we were on (now called the Taylor Highway) joins the Alaska Highway. The problem was, when we got to Tetlin Junction, I couldn't see a gas station anywhere.
I was working out mpg in my head, trying to calculate against the "kilometres left" on Arthur's readout (the Americans work in miles, the Canadians in kms), when to my left I saw something which at first I thought was a dog, then realised was in fact a small black bear. Sandra spotted it too, "ooh-ooh"ing and reaching for her camera. We slowed down and watched the fellow as he eyed the road from the safety of the long grass. I'm no bear expert, but I'd say he was either in his first or second summer, probably his second. I couldn't see a mother bear around, so he could have been on his own (he could also have been a she).
He trotted up to the edge of the road and started to walk along it, both of us videoing and photographing frantically, while trying to enjoy the moment; it was, after all, the first bear of this holiday. Then another vehicle came down the road in the opposite direction, and the bear slipped back into the undergrowth. We waited a while, but he didn't come back out.
We started off again. I reckoned we would have about 30 km of spare fuel in the tank if we had to go all the way to Beaver Creek without finding a gas station. Just to be sure, I knocked the air con off. Well, every little helps. We stopped a few more times for photo ops, and just to look at the staggering views (because most of the time they were just too big to photograph). The Kluane Ranges started to come into view, and behind them the Saint Elias Mountains, and behind THEM... well, it was difficult to tell where the snow-topped mountains ended and the distant clouds began.
At a tiny place called Northway, population 71, there was a gas station and we filled up, then headed down the last few miles of Alaska and over the Canadian border... where the road turned awful again. The Canadians are revamping this section of the Alaska Highway, and we had to endure about ten miles of gravel, construction and potholes before finally reaching a paved road again. There it was just a few miles to the Canadian customs post (where Jim Joel's green US visa waivers were unceremoniously removed from our passports), and then a final couple of miles to our accommodation for the night, the 1202 Motor Inn at Beaver Creek. It gets its name because when it was built it was at mile 1202 on the Alaska Highway, but the road has changed a lot since those days, and now it's at mile 1169. Or it would be if the Canadians measured things in miles, so actually it's at km 1935. Whatever, it's got a big plastic polar bear over the door, and it's quiet and got a comfortable bed, which is what we need after our long but satisfying road trip.
Thursday, 11 July 2013
Day 14 - The Dempster Highway (or "There And Back Again")
The Dempster Highway was originally conceived as part of a "roads to resources" project envisaged by Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in the late 1950s. He wanted to reassert control over Canada's natural resources, and open up the Canadian north. This particular highway was to be an all-weather road, reaching up into the Arctic Circle: an ambitious and challenging task that ended up 20 times over budget and 16 years late, being completed in 1979, two days after the death of the man who had envisioned it.
The challenges involved in building an all-weather road in such a hostile environment were enormous. First of all an insulating gravel pad was laid down to prevent the permafrost from melting (in the same way that the foundations of houses can warp if the permafrost beneath them melts, so would the road warp). In places this pad is 8 feet thick. Instead of dark tarmac, the surface was covered with light stone and dirt to reflect the sunlight. Bridges were built over rivers, and ferries put in place in the two areas where bridges weren't feasible.
In the end the Dempster runs almost 500 miles from the North Klondike Highway in the Yukon, to Inuvik in the North West Territories. But it's the landscape that it passes through which, I'd read, makes this one of the world's greatest road trips.
My problem in incorporating the Dempster Highway into this holiday was one of temporal logistics. Everything I'd read about it said I should do it, but at the same time it was going to take two days to go up it one way, and two days to go down it the other way, because when you get to Inuvik there's nothing else you can do but turn around and come back again. Also, I'd read that the road was only paved for the first 8 km, after that it's just packed dirt. I'd read of punctures, of no phone signals, no mechanical or fuel services until you reach Eagle Plains over 200 miles from the start. It seemed overly daunting, and in the end I decided it couldn't be that spectacular a drive; seriously, 457 miles of difficult road, gravel, mud, danger... could it be worth it?
But I did want to see what the road was like, and so I'd put aside one day of our holiday to travel some way up it. Today was that day. We took the continental breakfast for a healthy change (I dread to think how many eggs and how much bacon I've eaten over the last couple of weeks), then loaded up Arthur and set off. The beginning of the Dempster is about 20 miles back along the Klondike Highway, past Dawson City Airport. At the entrance to the highway is a sign, and a foreboding looking bridge. It's like heading through the Paths Of The Dead.
I was bothered about Arthur, too. When we took him up Keno Hill earlier in the holiday, it had been a really difficult drive for him, and I didn't want to ride him that hard again. It turned out that the Dempster - even after the first paved 8 km - wasn't too bad at all; in fact it was rather like the road between Mayo and Keno. Taken at a steady pace, it was very comfortable.
My initial impression was that the view from the road was similar to the views from other roads we've driven on in Canada. There were mountains in the background, and those damnable trees everywhere. You develop a kind of Cylon Eyes way of scanning the road ahead when driving in Canada, sweeping the tree line from side to side, watching in case something jumps out in front of you. I've seen plenty of rubber skid marks in the road where someone has had to brake sharply to avoid (or at least hopefully avoid) some wildlife that has broken cover. And so it was for the first 20 or so miles of the Dempster Highway. "Is this it?" I thought to myself.
Then the land begins to change. The trees drop away, and distant mountain ranges appear. This is the start of the darkly named Tombstone Territorial Park, where the North Klondike Mountains merge in with the Tombstone Range. The beautifully clear sky we had today let us see for miles, the landscape impossibly large and distant. Before too long you come upon the Tombstone Territorial Park Visitor Centre, a building fashioned to make minimal impact on the environment. There we stopped for a quick break and a look around, then continued on into the Blackstone Uplands.
And it's here that the Dempster starts to take you by the throat and shake you.
The road slowly twists and turns, revealing new views and mountain ranges, or deep valleys that stretch off into a distance you can barely comprehend. You trade places with the (few) fellow travellers on the highway, each of you stopping in different roadside pullouts to try and photograph some eye-straining panoramas.
Awe is something that you feel, but then it wears off; what happens on the Dempster Highway is that awe is continually renewed with each fresh view. It's almost tiring to be so repeatedly bombarded with such wonderful expanses of nature.
We came upon Two Moose Lake, and I grumbled as I saw an RV pulled in by the side of the road. I thought he was taking a picture of the lake, but as I crept past him I glanced right and saw an adult moose in the bushes. I pulled in slowly and stopped, and we all watched the creature munching and shifting through the undergrowth. And then - well, it was Two Moose Lake after all - a young moose appeared, hopping quickly after its mother, slipping in and out of view. "It's kinda neat, eh?" said the driver of the RV, summing it up perfectly. Sandra had tears running down her cheeks. It made the holiday for me.
Letting the two moose slip back into the bushes, we drove on, stopping a bit further on to eat lunch, both lost in our own thoughts among the massive landscape. I was beginning to see how this road could be an amazing road trip after all, how the two day there and two day back journey could well be worth taking... but that had to be tempered with the fact that, back at the Tombstone Visitor Centre, they'd had information that the highway was washed out in three separate places further north, victim of mountain rains.
We drove on, into the Taiga Range of mountains, an odd range with trees up one side but strangely bald on the other. Their light grey colour was so different to any other mountains we'd seen so far; this far north, and this high up, this is tundra, where vegetation is scant and low-growing. And so at last we came to a point where, reluctantly, we had to turn around and head back. Barely 100 miles we'd made it up the Dempster, only a fifth of the way, so many amazing sights we hadn't been able to see.
On the way back we came upon a deer, standing out in an open tract of land. We stopped and photographed it, it watched us photographing it. We waited for it to do something interesting, it waited for us to do something interesting. In the end we left it alone, and drove on.
We got back to Dawson about 7 pm and filled up with fuel. The 12 year old lad in the gas station asked if we were having a good day, and I told him we were, and that we'd been part of the way up the Dempster Highway that day. "R-sum, so now you have a dirty vehicle?" Indeed, it's true that Arthur has been blooded, finally he's as filthy as some of the other cars we've seen.
For our last night in Dawson we ate once more at the hotel, on the decking in the blazing sunshine, me drinking Yukon Gold and Sandra drinking something she can't pronounce (it's Pinot Grigio). What a great place this has been. It seems to have two hearts, one that beats to the rhythm of the tourists, and one that resolutely beats to the rhythm of the residents, come what may. Good on them, I like that. It speaks of the character and strength that made this place survive when it could easily have dried up and blown away after the Klondike Gold Rush.
Tomorrow we move on to the last stage of our trip. As for the Dempster Highway... yeah, I get it now.
The challenges involved in building an all-weather road in such a hostile environment were enormous. First of all an insulating gravel pad was laid down to prevent the permafrost from melting (in the same way that the foundations of houses can warp if the permafrost beneath them melts, so would the road warp). In places this pad is 8 feet thick. Instead of dark tarmac, the surface was covered with light stone and dirt to reflect the sunlight. Bridges were built over rivers, and ferries put in place in the two areas where bridges weren't feasible.
In the end the Dempster runs almost 500 miles from the North Klondike Highway in the Yukon, to Inuvik in the North West Territories. But it's the landscape that it passes through which, I'd read, makes this one of the world's greatest road trips.
My problem in incorporating the Dempster Highway into this holiday was one of temporal logistics. Everything I'd read about it said I should do it, but at the same time it was going to take two days to go up it one way, and two days to go down it the other way, because when you get to Inuvik there's nothing else you can do but turn around and come back again. Also, I'd read that the road was only paved for the first 8 km, after that it's just packed dirt. I'd read of punctures, of no phone signals, no mechanical or fuel services until you reach Eagle Plains over 200 miles from the start. It seemed overly daunting, and in the end I decided it couldn't be that spectacular a drive; seriously, 457 miles of difficult road, gravel, mud, danger... could it be worth it?
But I did want to see what the road was like, and so I'd put aside one day of our holiday to travel some way up it. Today was that day. We took the continental breakfast for a healthy change (I dread to think how many eggs and how much bacon I've eaten over the last couple of weeks), then loaded up Arthur and set off. The beginning of the Dempster is about 20 miles back along the Klondike Highway, past Dawson City Airport. At the entrance to the highway is a sign, and a foreboding looking bridge. It's like heading through the Paths Of The Dead.
I was bothered about Arthur, too. When we took him up Keno Hill earlier in the holiday, it had been a really difficult drive for him, and I didn't want to ride him that hard again. It turned out that the Dempster - even after the first paved 8 km - wasn't too bad at all; in fact it was rather like the road between Mayo and Keno. Taken at a steady pace, it was very comfortable.
My initial impression was that the view from the road was similar to the views from other roads we've driven on in Canada. There were mountains in the background, and those damnable trees everywhere. You develop a kind of Cylon Eyes way of scanning the road ahead when driving in Canada, sweeping the tree line from side to side, watching in case something jumps out in front of you. I've seen plenty of rubber skid marks in the road where someone has had to brake sharply to avoid (or at least hopefully avoid) some wildlife that has broken cover. And so it was for the first 20 or so miles of the Dempster Highway. "Is this it?" I thought to myself.
Then the land begins to change. The trees drop away, and distant mountain ranges appear. This is the start of the darkly named Tombstone Territorial Park, where the North Klondike Mountains merge in with the Tombstone Range. The beautifully clear sky we had today let us see for miles, the landscape impossibly large and distant. Before too long you come upon the Tombstone Territorial Park Visitor Centre, a building fashioned to make minimal impact on the environment. There we stopped for a quick break and a look around, then continued on into the Blackstone Uplands.
And it's here that the Dempster starts to take you by the throat and shake you.
The road slowly twists and turns, revealing new views and mountain ranges, or deep valleys that stretch off into a distance you can barely comprehend. You trade places with the (few) fellow travellers on the highway, each of you stopping in different roadside pullouts to try and photograph some eye-straining panoramas.
Awe is something that you feel, but then it wears off; what happens on the Dempster Highway is that awe is continually renewed with each fresh view. It's almost tiring to be so repeatedly bombarded with such wonderful expanses of nature.
We came upon Two Moose Lake, and I grumbled as I saw an RV pulled in by the side of the road. I thought he was taking a picture of the lake, but as I crept past him I glanced right and saw an adult moose in the bushes. I pulled in slowly and stopped, and we all watched the creature munching and shifting through the undergrowth. And then - well, it was Two Moose Lake after all - a young moose appeared, hopping quickly after its mother, slipping in and out of view. "It's kinda neat, eh?" said the driver of the RV, summing it up perfectly. Sandra had tears running down her cheeks. It made the holiday for me.
Letting the two moose slip back into the bushes, we drove on, stopping a bit further on to eat lunch, both lost in our own thoughts among the massive landscape. I was beginning to see how this road could be an amazing road trip after all, how the two day there and two day back journey could well be worth taking... but that had to be tempered with the fact that, back at the Tombstone Visitor Centre, they'd had information that the highway was washed out in three separate places further north, victim of mountain rains.
We drove on, into the Taiga Range of mountains, an odd range with trees up one side but strangely bald on the other. Their light grey colour was so different to any other mountains we'd seen so far; this far north, and this high up, this is tundra, where vegetation is scant and low-growing. And so at last we came to a point where, reluctantly, we had to turn around and head back. Barely 100 miles we'd made it up the Dempster, only a fifth of the way, so many amazing sights we hadn't been able to see.
On the way back we came upon a deer, standing out in an open tract of land. We stopped and photographed it, it watched us photographing it. We waited for it to do something interesting, it waited for us to do something interesting. In the end we left it alone, and drove on.
We got back to Dawson about 7 pm and filled up with fuel. The 12 year old lad in the gas station asked if we were having a good day, and I told him we were, and that we'd been part of the way up the Dempster Highway that day. "R-sum, so now you have a dirty vehicle?" Indeed, it's true that Arthur has been blooded, finally he's as filthy as some of the other cars we've seen.
For our last night in Dawson we ate once more at the hotel, on the decking in the blazing sunshine, me drinking Yukon Gold and Sandra drinking something she can't pronounce (it's Pinot Grigio). What a great place this has been. It seems to have two hearts, one that beats to the rhythm of the tourists, and one that resolutely beats to the rhythm of the residents, come what may. Good on them, I like that. It speaks of the character and strength that made this place survive when it could easily have dried up and blown away after the Klondike Gold Rush.
Tomorrow we move on to the last stage of our trip. As for the Dempster Highway... yeah, I get it now.
Wednesday, 10 July 2013
Day 13 - Klondike Spirit
The weather forecast for today seemed grim, with clouds and a 60% chance of precipitation (or "participation", as Sandra calls it). Luckily we had a couple of bad weather options up our sleeve, the first of which was a visit to the Dawson City Museum, the largest museum in the Yukon. Just as we got there we were pointed to the locomotive exhibition in an adjacent building, which is only opened three times a day (I'm not sure if they think someone is going to nick one of the exhibits). There a chap dressed in period costume (I'm not sure which period, possibly very early 20th century) gave an informative talk on the four steam locomotives in the building, as well as their use in the period following the Gold Rush. These engines had a relatively short use, as they were expensive to run and were soon replaced by sternwheelers and the road system. They were mainly used to carry cordwood to huge boilers that had been built to inject steam into many square miles of permafrost in the area in order to melt it so that it could actually be dug up, until someone with a physics degree pointed out that the rate of cooling between two bodies is proportional to the temperature difference between them (think along the lines of warm water put out for the birds on a winter's day freezes quicker than cold water put out for the birds), so in pumping steam into the permafrost they were expending a ridiculous amount of energy, and all they really needed to do was pump cold water into it. So no need for cordwood for the boilers, and another nail in the locomotives' coffins.
From there we went around to the back of the museum where we were given a demonstration of the sluice box method of retrieving gold from paydirt. Again it's fascinating how the density of gold, being so much greater than the surrounding water, dirt and rocks enabled such a rough and ready method to collect so much of the precious metal with little or no waste.
Then we wandered around the museum itself. To be honest, though interesting, it was telling us a lot of information we'd already picked up from a number of other sources; I guess we're becoming Gold Rush experts now. What was unusual about the museum was that a lot of the mannequins used in the exhibits had faces and hands cast from actual Dawson City townsfolk. What was doubly unusual was that often the hands and face on any one mannequin were from different people. Now that's just plain weird.
Prior to going to the museum, and just after we'd finished breakfast, we attempted to book ourselves onto a river cruise on the Klondike Spirit, a paddleboat moored further up the river, that we'd walked past a few times already. Now it appears that you don't get many tourists in this part of the world who are going it alone; most are affiliated to a tour party, and the biggest tour operator in these parts seems to be Holland America. Holland America block books cruises on the Klondike Spirit, and a party of two from the UK trying to book a similar cruise seems an alien concept to many, including the 15 year old pimply youth at the booking station associated with our hotel. It took him a while to grasp what it was exactly that we wanted to do ("You're... you're not with Holland America?"), and when he finally worked it out, it took him even longer to print out our confirmation and ticket on his ageing laser printer. But at last, we had it, our ticket for the 1 pm sailing of the Klondike Spirit.
I didn't hold out much hope.
We left the museum just after noon, stopped off at the Bonanza Market to buy sandwiches for our boat trip (every business here seems to have one or more of the words "Bonanza", "Klondike", "Eldorado", "Gold Rush" or "Sourdough" associated with it), then headed down to the visitor information centre to pick up a leaflet about the drive to Beaver Creek we'll be taking on Friday. We then crossed the road to where there was a building that had information about the Dempster Highway, which is on our itinerary for tomorrow. It seems that this road to Inuvik is blocked at the moment north of Eagle Plains due to a washout. How pleased was I that I'd decided not to drive to Inuvik: at best we wouldn't have been able to make it, at worst we'd have been trapped there, for the Dempster Highway is the only road in and out of that town. I asked how long the repairs would take, and was told, "they'll be finished when they're finished, I guess".
It now being almost 1 pm, we walked over to where the Klondike Spirit was docked. There was no one else there. We waited a while but there was still no one else there, and by now it was even closer to 1 pm. Gingerly we boarded the boat and found a man furiously text-messaging. He looked surprised to see us. I wasn't surprised at his surprise. We told him we'd booked a ticket with our hotel for a cruise on this vessel, and he asked if we were with Holland America. We told him we weren't, and said that nevertheless we'd still like to be part of his one o'clock sailing. "But we don't sail until three o'clock," he said. That was it, the pimply youth was off my Christmas list. The text-messager assured us that our ticket would be valid at the 3 pm sailing, even though it had "1 pm" emblazoned on it. "You'll be here at three, will you?" I asked. "Haha, of course," he said. "Haha," I said, not believing him in the slightest.
We disembarked and made our way along the river front to some picnic tables we'd spotted earlier in the week, and, with no sign of the 60% rain, we took off our coats and ate lunch in the sunshine. It was beautiful. So quiet, it makes us wonder how we will adjust to the pace of life back in England again.
After lunch we did a bit of souvenir shopping, then went back to the Klondike Spirit for sailing attempt number two. Against all odds, Furious Text-Messager was there, and he remembered us. A Swiss family turned up, talking to each other in their language which sounds like someone coughing in German. And then, like a coach full of old, fat messiahs, the Holland America party showed up. We all got on the boat (no one even looked at our ticket!), listened to the safety announcements read by a girl from Istonia into a muffled microphone through a PA system with the volume turned down to "1", and then we were off.
We followed the course of the Yukon for a little way, then turned and headed over towards the far bank where the sad and rotting corpse of an old sternwheeler lay. Apparently there are other ruined boats like this dotted along the river, left there when their usefulness was over and there was no commercial viability in doing anything else with them. We headed back the way we had come, fighting against the current (a sternwheeler could travel from Whitehorse to Dawson in just one and a half days, but Dawson back to Whitehorse would take four to five days, so strong is the current). The town passed us by to port, but on the starboard side there seemed to be something odd in the hillside. It was a Canadian flag. The Istonian girl was mumbling something over the PA, but with the noise of engine it was impossible for me to hear her. Suddenly, like sheep, all the Holland America people appeared and started taking pictures. It was more than just a Canadian flag, it was a dwelling of some sort. It turns out that this is where Caveman Bill lives, and has lived since 1996. How fantastic. Personally, if I'd chosen to live in a cave on the edge of the Yukon River, the last thing I'd want is a bunch of Holland America people taking pictures of my home.
The promised rain came then, and took the shine off the cruise. We trudged past the confluence of the Klondike River, then turned and headed back to Dawson, docking just over 90 minutes after we'd set off. By the time we'd got back to the hotel and showered, the sun had come out, so we sat out on the restaurant's deck area in the warm northern air, and I had elk stew and Sandra had salmon and chips.
We've pretty much done with the Gold Rush and the Klondike spirit that drove men to flock here in such numbers. I thought it was perhaps a higher purpose that sent them here in search of gold, but the more I've read and the more I've discovered has convinced me that no, it was simple greed that called them here, and simple greed that called them away from this small town and on to Nome, Alaska where the next stampede occurred.
Tomorrow we're going to start the second stage of our holiday, getting more back to nature. Walking boots at the ready...
From there we went around to the back of the museum where we were given a demonstration of the sluice box method of retrieving gold from paydirt. Again it's fascinating how the density of gold, being so much greater than the surrounding water, dirt and rocks enabled such a rough and ready method to collect so much of the precious metal with little or no waste.
Then we wandered around the museum itself. To be honest, though interesting, it was telling us a lot of information we'd already picked up from a number of other sources; I guess we're becoming Gold Rush experts now. What was unusual about the museum was that a lot of the mannequins used in the exhibits had faces and hands cast from actual Dawson City townsfolk. What was doubly unusual was that often the hands and face on any one mannequin were from different people. Now that's just plain weird.
Prior to going to the museum, and just after we'd finished breakfast, we attempted to book ourselves onto a river cruise on the Klondike Spirit, a paddleboat moored further up the river, that we'd walked past a few times already. Now it appears that you don't get many tourists in this part of the world who are going it alone; most are affiliated to a tour party, and the biggest tour operator in these parts seems to be Holland America. Holland America block books cruises on the Klondike Spirit, and a party of two from the UK trying to book a similar cruise seems an alien concept to many, including the 15 year old pimply youth at the booking station associated with our hotel. It took him a while to grasp what it was exactly that we wanted to do ("You're... you're not with Holland America?"), and when he finally worked it out, it took him even longer to print out our confirmation and ticket on his ageing laser printer. But at last, we had it, our ticket for the 1 pm sailing of the Klondike Spirit.
I didn't hold out much hope.
We left the museum just after noon, stopped off at the Bonanza Market to buy sandwiches for our boat trip (every business here seems to have one or more of the words "Bonanza", "Klondike", "Eldorado", "Gold Rush" or "Sourdough" associated with it), then headed down to the visitor information centre to pick up a leaflet about the drive to Beaver Creek we'll be taking on Friday. We then crossed the road to where there was a building that had information about the Dempster Highway, which is on our itinerary for tomorrow. It seems that this road to Inuvik is blocked at the moment north of Eagle Plains due to a washout. How pleased was I that I'd decided not to drive to Inuvik: at best we wouldn't have been able to make it, at worst we'd have been trapped there, for the Dempster Highway is the only road in and out of that town. I asked how long the repairs would take, and was told, "they'll be finished when they're finished, I guess".
It now being almost 1 pm, we walked over to where the Klondike Spirit was docked. There was no one else there. We waited a while but there was still no one else there, and by now it was even closer to 1 pm. Gingerly we boarded the boat and found a man furiously text-messaging. He looked surprised to see us. I wasn't surprised at his surprise. We told him we'd booked a ticket with our hotel for a cruise on this vessel, and he asked if we were with Holland America. We told him we weren't, and said that nevertheless we'd still like to be part of his one o'clock sailing. "But we don't sail until three o'clock," he said. That was it, the pimply youth was off my Christmas list. The text-messager assured us that our ticket would be valid at the 3 pm sailing, even though it had "1 pm" emblazoned on it. "You'll be here at three, will you?" I asked. "Haha, of course," he said. "Haha," I said, not believing him in the slightest.
We disembarked and made our way along the river front to some picnic tables we'd spotted earlier in the week, and, with no sign of the 60% rain, we took off our coats and ate lunch in the sunshine. It was beautiful. So quiet, it makes us wonder how we will adjust to the pace of life back in England again.
After lunch we did a bit of souvenir shopping, then went back to the Klondike Spirit for sailing attempt number two. Against all odds, Furious Text-Messager was there, and he remembered us. A Swiss family turned up, talking to each other in their language which sounds like someone coughing in German. And then, like a coach full of old, fat messiahs, the Holland America party showed up. We all got on the boat (no one even looked at our ticket!), listened to the safety announcements read by a girl from Istonia into a muffled microphone through a PA system with the volume turned down to "1", and then we were off.
We followed the course of the Yukon for a little way, then turned and headed over towards the far bank where the sad and rotting corpse of an old sternwheeler lay. Apparently there are other ruined boats like this dotted along the river, left there when their usefulness was over and there was no commercial viability in doing anything else with them. We headed back the way we had come, fighting against the current (a sternwheeler could travel from Whitehorse to Dawson in just one and a half days, but Dawson back to Whitehorse would take four to five days, so strong is the current). The town passed us by to port, but on the starboard side there seemed to be something odd in the hillside. It was a Canadian flag. The Istonian girl was mumbling something over the PA, but with the noise of engine it was impossible for me to hear her. Suddenly, like sheep, all the Holland America people appeared and started taking pictures. It was more than just a Canadian flag, it was a dwelling of some sort. It turns out that this is where Caveman Bill lives, and has lived since 1996. How fantastic. Personally, if I'd chosen to live in a cave on the edge of the Yukon River, the last thing I'd want is a bunch of Holland America people taking pictures of my home.
The promised rain came then, and took the shine off the cruise. We trudged past the confluence of the Klondike River, then turned and headed back to Dawson, docking just over 90 minutes after we'd set off. By the time we'd got back to the hotel and showered, the sun had come out, so we sat out on the restaurant's deck area in the warm northern air, and I had elk stew and Sandra had salmon and chips.
We've pretty much done with the Gold Rush and the Klondike spirit that drove men to flock here in such numbers. I thought it was perhaps a higher purpose that sent them here in search of gold, but the more I've read and the more I've discovered has convinced me that no, it was simple greed that called them here, and simple greed that called them away from this small town and on to Nome, Alaska where the next stampede occurred.
Tomorrow we're going to start the second stage of our holiday, getting more back to nature. Walking boots at the ready...
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Day 12 - Dredge Number 4
It was a slow start this morning. Nothing really to do but eat breakfast (cereal bars and coffee, this crazy hotel doesn't have a restaurant), then catch the complimentary taxi to the airport. The taxi driver was a Croatian ex-army utter nutcase. He spent the entire 8 mile journey bemoaning the human race and informing us that we were all doomed to die in religious and race-hate terrorism (and I'd thought the people of Inuvik were a model of how different races can live together in some semblence of cooperation). His lunacy was only further emphasised by the fact that, even though he had a thick eastern European accent, he kept dropping Canadian "eh?"s into his sentences... "Ve are all doomt, hhhlisten to me, vot I say is ze trute, eh?"
Inuvik airport is slightly larger than Dawson City airport in that it has a real baggage carousel instead of just a hatch in the wall through which the luggage handlers push your suitcases. We were there about an hour and a half early, again before the Air North terminal had opened, but there were more passengers around and the time seemed to pass faster than it had at Dawson yesterday morning. Soon enough we were called to Gate 2 (I believe Gate 1 is where we arrived yesterday), which was held open by one of the airport employees with her foot as we stepped through. "Step around the wing," she called, "step around the wing... oh hang on, I've given you the wrong boarding pass stub, come back!"
We managed to get seats next to each other this time (actually the plane was far from full), and took off on time, landing back at a beautifully warm Dawson City Airport just after lunch time, lunch being a better-than-Bruce's sandwich on the plane. Arthur was there where we'd left him, in the long-stay carpark (which was just a gravel patch across the road from the airport). We fired him up and headed back to town, with two stops planned before we came back to the hotel.
First was the Midnight Dome, a viewpoint from the top of the hill behind Dawson City. I'd seen no pictures from here during my internet searches, so had no idea what to expect. What we got was a jaw-dropping view over the valley with the Yukon river flowing south to north, the tiny-looking Klondike joining from the east, and Dawson City itself looking small and cosy adjacent the two. It was truly spectacular, and made me wonder what any of the feverish and frantic Gold Rush stampeders would have thought of it all had they made their way up there.
Second, after filling Arthur's tank for the second time this holiday, we set off in search of Dredge Number 4. The Klondike Gold Rush lasted about two years, then another strike was announced in Alaska, and most of the miners and prospectors left Dawson City for new pastures. The population of the town dropped from 30,000 down to about 2,000, but those who remained were a different breed. Not for them the pain-staking manual labour of panning and shovel-mining, these guys brought in the big guns, the mechanical mining systems. The most avaricious of these were the dredges, which effectively performed the same function as a prospector's sluice box, but on a much more massive scale. The first of these dredges appeared in 1899, but the biggest of them (technically the largest wooden-hulled bucket-lined dredge in North America) was built in 1912. This was Dredge Number 4. It operated in the Klondike region until 1959, and on one record breaking day alone in the 1920s it produced gold worth over a million dollars.
These dredges would run 24 hours a day for between 6 and 10 months of the year, tearing through the Klondike fields: the landscape around Dawson to this day is reformed from the Gold Rush days, piled high with miles of discarded rocks (known as tailings) from the dredges. Number 4 is enormous, and at 8 storeys high far bigger than I imagined it would be. I thought it might be a cast-off piece of machinery, but in fact it's a lovingly restored relic maintained by the superb Parks Canada.
From Dredge Number 4 we came back to the hotel room from which we've been absent for the last day, and dropped our things off before going over to the main hub of this multi-part hotel for beer o'clock. We were sitting out on the decking when the first real rainstorm we've experienced this holiday hit, and drove us inside. We've had great weather for the last couple of weeks, but the rest of the holiday looks a little cooler with perhaps more rain. I can't really complain, I was more unsure about the weather in this part of the world than anything else.
Tonight we ate, of all things, Greek, at The Drunken Goat Taverna. It looks small and unprepossessing from the outside, and when you get inside it's still small but very lively. We had the sample plate, and it was fantastic, beautifully cooked meat with rice. Very impressed.
We still have a couple of days left in Dawson, and there are lots more interesting nuggets to discover. See what I did there?
Inuvik airport is slightly larger than Dawson City airport in that it has a real baggage carousel instead of just a hatch in the wall through which the luggage handlers push your suitcases. We were there about an hour and a half early, again before the Air North terminal had opened, but there were more passengers around and the time seemed to pass faster than it had at Dawson yesterday morning. Soon enough we were called to Gate 2 (I believe Gate 1 is where we arrived yesterday), which was held open by one of the airport employees with her foot as we stepped through. "Step around the wing," she called, "step around the wing... oh hang on, I've given you the wrong boarding pass stub, come back!"
We managed to get seats next to each other this time (actually the plane was far from full), and took off on time, landing back at a beautifully warm Dawson City Airport just after lunch time, lunch being a better-than-Bruce's sandwich on the plane. Arthur was there where we'd left him, in the long-stay carpark (which was just a gravel patch across the road from the airport). We fired him up and headed back to town, with two stops planned before we came back to the hotel.
First was the Midnight Dome, a viewpoint from the top of the hill behind Dawson City. I'd seen no pictures from here during my internet searches, so had no idea what to expect. What we got was a jaw-dropping view over the valley with the Yukon river flowing south to north, the tiny-looking Klondike joining from the east, and Dawson City itself looking small and cosy adjacent the two. It was truly spectacular, and made me wonder what any of the feverish and frantic Gold Rush stampeders would have thought of it all had they made their way up there.
Second, after filling Arthur's tank for the second time this holiday, we set off in search of Dredge Number 4. The Klondike Gold Rush lasted about two years, then another strike was announced in Alaska, and most of the miners and prospectors left Dawson City for new pastures. The population of the town dropped from 30,000 down to about 2,000, but those who remained were a different breed. Not for them the pain-staking manual labour of panning and shovel-mining, these guys brought in the big guns, the mechanical mining systems. The most avaricious of these were the dredges, which effectively performed the same function as a prospector's sluice box, but on a much more massive scale. The first of these dredges appeared in 1899, but the biggest of them (technically the largest wooden-hulled bucket-lined dredge in North America) was built in 1912. This was Dredge Number 4. It operated in the Klondike region until 1959, and on one record breaking day alone in the 1920s it produced gold worth over a million dollars.
These dredges would run 24 hours a day for between 6 and 10 months of the year, tearing through the Klondike fields: the landscape around Dawson to this day is reformed from the Gold Rush days, piled high with miles of discarded rocks (known as tailings) from the dredges. Number 4 is enormous, and at 8 storeys high far bigger than I imagined it would be. I thought it might be a cast-off piece of machinery, but in fact it's a lovingly restored relic maintained by the superb Parks Canada.
From Dredge Number 4 we came back to the hotel room from which we've been absent for the last day, and dropped our things off before going over to the main hub of this multi-part hotel for beer o'clock. We were sitting out on the decking when the first real rainstorm we've experienced this holiday hit, and drove us inside. We've had great weather for the last couple of weeks, but the rest of the holiday looks a little cooler with perhaps more rain. I can't really complain, I was more unsure about the weather in this part of the world than anything else.
Tonight we ate, of all things, Greek, at The Drunken Goat Taverna. It looks small and unprepossessing from the outside, and when you get inside it's still small but very lively. We had the sample plate, and it was fantastic, beautifully cooked meat with rice. Very impressed.
We still have a couple of days left in Dawson, and there are lots more interesting nuggets to discover. See what I did there?
Monday, 8 July 2013
Day 11 - The Land Of The Midnight Sun
As I write this I'm at latitude 68° 21′ north, 62 miles from the Arctic Ocean and 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle. We're in Inuvik, in the North West Territories, and the sun hasn't set here since 23rd May. It's not due to set again until 19th July.
I'm surprised everyone here isn't as mad as a hatter by now, they haven't seen darkness for over 6 weeks.
Inuvik (pronounced inoovik) is a strange town. It was fabricated from scratch in the 1950s because the Canadian Government decided they needed a permanent communication centre in the Western Arctic. They looked at the existing Inuit town of Aklavik but decided it was too prone to flooding, so they built Inuvik instead, on the eastern bank of the Mackenzie River. It wasn't just a communication centre, it was an experiment in building a permanent town in the very north of the country, able to withstand the extremes of weather that this part of the world can throw at a community (temperatures can vary 80 degrees over the course of a year, from 30°C in the summer down to -50°C in the winter). Thus all the buildings are set on raised piles to avoid their foundations melting the permafrost, and utilities such as water and sewerage are piped between buildings in above-ground metal conduits called utilidors.
3500 people live here, a mixed bag of all races and religions (there are four Christian churches on the main road, and an Islamic mosque on one of the back roads - the muslims have it particularly tough come Ramadan, as they're not supposed to eat until the sun sets, and of course... the sun doesn't set here: therefore they're allowed to pretend it's Winnipeg Time for the duration of their month-long fast). There is the beginning of a tourist industry, with lots of emphasis on the local Inuit produce (carvings, clothes, etc.), but - as can be surmised from the number of large and well-featured hotels - there is a lot of business done here too. Northern Canada is rich in minerals and oil, so not only are there professional office-type people here, but also the labourers for the oil and mineral companies; indeed, the TV series Ice Road Truckers features a number of episodes with drivers heading up the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk (usually abbreviated to just Tuk).
One of my goals of this holiday was to get above the Arctic Circle. It's just one of those markers, like crossing the Equator (which we did last year), or going over the International Date Line. Flying over to Canada you actually cross the Arctic Circle, but I wanted to stand on the ground above it. Initially I was going to drive up the Dempster Highway, but the simple fact is that to get to the Arctic Circle that way would take a day's driving on a road that requires a lot of concentration. You also need somewhere to stay at the end of that day, and the Eagle Plains Motel, the only accomodation at all on that part of the Dempster Highway, never responded to my email. Plus then you'd have a day's drive back over the same difficult road to get back to civilisation. It seemed like a lot of work, and a chunk out of our holiday. To drive the Dempster Highway all the way from Dawson City to its end, which is here in Inuvik, would take two days each way, plus a day in Inuvik, a total of five days which I thought just too much.
And so I decided we'd fly from Dawson to Inuvik, stay here overnight, and fly back tomorrow. Cheating, perhaps, but expedient.
The alarm woke us just after 5 am, and we clung to each other for a while in disbelief, before forcing ourselves out of bed. The hotel restaurant wasn't open at that time, so we had cereal bars and coffee in our room, before heading out to Dawson City Airport the recommended two hours before our flight was due.
We were the first two people at the airport. Not just the first two passengers, the first two people. The Air North desk wasn't due to open for another 45 minutes after we'd got there. We felt a bit stupid really. Three quarters of an hour later an oldish guy with an enormous beer gut turned up behind the Air North desk, wished us good morning, and then started attacking his computer mouse with fervour. No one needs to click their mouse that much unless they're playing Minesweeper.
About an hour before the flight, people began to show up. They all seemed to know each other, which didn't surprise me; there can't be many tourists like Sandra and me taking that flight. A lot of the people turning up had laptop bags, or rugged, waterproofed hold-alls which implied overnight stays in rough conditions. Eventually the aeroplane showed up, a knackered looking Hawker Siddeley 748, and we were invited to board through gate 28 (I have no idea where gates 1-27 were, gate 28 was just a door in the side of the hut we were all in). It wasn't exactly Flying Wild Alaska, but it felt pretty close. As the flight had come in from somewhere else, a lot of the seats were already occupied so Sandra and I had to sit behind one another instead of next to each other. I was sitting next to a denim-clad guy wearing a baseball cap who fell asleep as we hurtled down the runway, remained asleep through one of the most turbulent flights I've ever known, and woke ten minutes before landing, whereupon he talked my ears off about the fast approaching landscape.
It was cold and windy when we stepped off the plane, but at least it wasn't snowing. We were above the Arctic Circle after all. We caught the complimentary ride to our hotel, the Capital Suites, unpacked our meagre belongings, and then set out into Inuvik.
It's hard to describe the town. It looks untidy in most places. Only about 20 percent of it looks picturesque. All of it is fascinating though. We walked along Mackenzie Road, the main street through the town, ticking off almost immediately the Catholic "Igloo Church", the most obvious landmark in town. I'm often wary and suspicious of new places, but soon found that people were smiling at us as they passed, saying hello, in a genuinely nice way. It helped set us at ease.
One of the main things I wanted to see though, was off the main street. We slipped down a side road and started walking back the way we had come. My Bradt Yukon guide book says, "... the pace is slower here and, because it's out of the way, the people are friendly. They have time to stop and talk with visitors who've ventured off the beaten track". That's the sort of thing that makes me think, "shyeah, right", but as we walked past one house a guy hailed us from his deck. We gave him a "hello" right back, so he shouted, "you guys aren't from round these parts?", and he came down and talked to us for a few minutes about where we were from, what he did in town, and even asked us back for coffee if we were passing later. We didn't have time to go back, but that invitation warmed me to the people of Inuvik.
Following the road round we came upon what I had been looking for. Almost a thousand miles away from here, as the crow flies, is the town of Peace River. I had been amazed, when visiting that town, by the size of the mighty Peace River itself, noting how it drained into another river at the end of its course. And that other river drains into the Mackenzie River, and that river flows past Inuvik and drains into the Arctic Ocean itself, just over 60 miles away. It was like the seeing the culmination of something I'd kicked off 5 years ago.
We then walked back into town, looking for something to eat. For some reason we settled on a place called Al Forno, the name of which is an Italian style meaning "baked in the oven". From the outside it looked like a dump, from the inside it looked like... a dump. There were no lights on inside, it looked closed. Then a little wizened guy appeared out of the shadows... "I keep de lights off to keep de bugs away" (he was right to do so, there are lots of mosquitoes here). We ordered two cheese burgers, and he went off to cook them. It was a weird, weird place, but the guy's burgers were great, on lovely toasted buns. We were eating them (the only two people eating in the joint), when a guy showed up and started talking to the proprietor. "Hi... I hear you got some work needs doing? Plastering, dry walling?" "Dat's right." "Only I just going out of jail..."
It was an eyebrow moment.
Who can judge? Anyone of us can fall on hard times. And the guy's burgers were good.
We finished up and left calmly, then went on to the Visitor Centre (we should have gone there first really, but the weather had been so good - coats off, t-shirts in the sunshine), and having finished there, we went back into town via the Greenhouse Project (trying to grow fresh veg year round for Arctic communities) to some of the local gift shops to stock up on some souvenirs.
We got Chinese take-out from The Roost and took it back to our hotel with a bottle of wine. It wasn't the best Chinese ever, but I'd eat that over KFC, who have a franchise here (no Golden Arches though, which must be a first).
I'm glad we came here. I'm doubly glad I hadn't driven two days up the Dempster Highway to get here, as I think it would have been a disappointment. But Inuvik is quirky, interesting enough for a day visit, and the people - who continually make these Canadian holidays just that bit more special - take it up another notch. And for icing on the cake, when we were walking back to the hotel with our take-away, a group of Inuvik drummers and dancers were entertaining the crowds on a small bandstand near our hotel. Brilliant.
Back to Dawson tomorrow, more Gold Rush exploring to do yet.
I'm surprised everyone here isn't as mad as a hatter by now, they haven't seen darkness for over 6 weeks.
Inuvik (pronounced inoovik) is a strange town. It was fabricated from scratch in the 1950s because the Canadian Government decided they needed a permanent communication centre in the Western Arctic. They looked at the existing Inuit town of Aklavik but decided it was too prone to flooding, so they built Inuvik instead, on the eastern bank of the Mackenzie River. It wasn't just a communication centre, it was an experiment in building a permanent town in the very north of the country, able to withstand the extremes of weather that this part of the world can throw at a community (temperatures can vary 80 degrees over the course of a year, from 30°C in the summer down to -50°C in the winter). Thus all the buildings are set on raised piles to avoid their foundations melting the permafrost, and utilities such as water and sewerage are piped between buildings in above-ground metal conduits called utilidors.
3500 people live here, a mixed bag of all races and religions (there are four Christian churches on the main road, and an Islamic mosque on one of the back roads - the muslims have it particularly tough come Ramadan, as they're not supposed to eat until the sun sets, and of course... the sun doesn't set here: therefore they're allowed to pretend it's Winnipeg Time for the duration of their month-long fast). There is the beginning of a tourist industry, with lots of emphasis on the local Inuit produce (carvings, clothes, etc.), but - as can be surmised from the number of large and well-featured hotels - there is a lot of business done here too. Northern Canada is rich in minerals and oil, so not only are there professional office-type people here, but also the labourers for the oil and mineral companies; indeed, the TV series Ice Road Truckers features a number of episodes with drivers heading up the ice road from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk (usually abbreviated to just Tuk).
One of my goals of this holiday was to get above the Arctic Circle. It's just one of those markers, like crossing the Equator (which we did last year), or going over the International Date Line. Flying over to Canada you actually cross the Arctic Circle, but I wanted to stand on the ground above it. Initially I was going to drive up the Dempster Highway, but the simple fact is that to get to the Arctic Circle that way would take a day's driving on a road that requires a lot of concentration. You also need somewhere to stay at the end of that day, and the Eagle Plains Motel, the only accomodation at all on that part of the Dempster Highway, never responded to my email. Plus then you'd have a day's drive back over the same difficult road to get back to civilisation. It seemed like a lot of work, and a chunk out of our holiday. To drive the Dempster Highway all the way from Dawson City to its end, which is here in Inuvik, would take two days each way, plus a day in Inuvik, a total of five days which I thought just too much.
And so I decided we'd fly from Dawson to Inuvik, stay here overnight, and fly back tomorrow. Cheating, perhaps, but expedient.
The alarm woke us just after 5 am, and we clung to each other for a while in disbelief, before forcing ourselves out of bed. The hotel restaurant wasn't open at that time, so we had cereal bars and coffee in our room, before heading out to Dawson City Airport the recommended two hours before our flight was due.
We were the first two people at the airport. Not just the first two passengers, the first two people. The Air North desk wasn't due to open for another 45 minutes after we'd got there. We felt a bit stupid really. Three quarters of an hour later an oldish guy with an enormous beer gut turned up behind the Air North desk, wished us good morning, and then started attacking his computer mouse with fervour. No one needs to click their mouse that much unless they're playing Minesweeper.
About an hour before the flight, people began to show up. They all seemed to know each other, which didn't surprise me; there can't be many tourists like Sandra and me taking that flight. A lot of the people turning up had laptop bags, or rugged, waterproofed hold-alls which implied overnight stays in rough conditions. Eventually the aeroplane showed up, a knackered looking Hawker Siddeley 748, and we were invited to board through gate 28 (I have no idea where gates 1-27 were, gate 28 was just a door in the side of the hut we were all in). It wasn't exactly Flying Wild Alaska, but it felt pretty close. As the flight had come in from somewhere else, a lot of the seats were already occupied so Sandra and I had to sit behind one another instead of next to each other. I was sitting next to a denim-clad guy wearing a baseball cap who fell asleep as we hurtled down the runway, remained asleep through one of the most turbulent flights I've ever known, and woke ten minutes before landing, whereupon he talked my ears off about the fast approaching landscape.
It was cold and windy when we stepped off the plane, but at least it wasn't snowing. We were above the Arctic Circle after all. We caught the complimentary ride to our hotel, the Capital Suites, unpacked our meagre belongings, and then set out into Inuvik.
It's hard to describe the town. It looks untidy in most places. Only about 20 percent of it looks picturesque. All of it is fascinating though. We walked along Mackenzie Road, the main street through the town, ticking off almost immediately the Catholic "Igloo Church", the most obvious landmark in town. I'm often wary and suspicious of new places, but soon found that people were smiling at us as they passed, saying hello, in a genuinely nice way. It helped set us at ease.
One of the main things I wanted to see though, was off the main street. We slipped down a side road and started walking back the way we had come. My Bradt Yukon guide book says, "... the pace is slower here and, because it's out of the way, the people are friendly. They have time to stop and talk with visitors who've ventured off the beaten track". That's the sort of thing that makes me think, "shyeah, right", but as we walked past one house a guy hailed us from his deck. We gave him a "hello" right back, so he shouted, "you guys aren't from round these parts?", and he came down and talked to us for a few minutes about where we were from, what he did in town, and even asked us back for coffee if we were passing later. We didn't have time to go back, but that invitation warmed me to the people of Inuvik.
Following the road round we came upon what I had been looking for. Almost a thousand miles away from here, as the crow flies, is the town of Peace River. I had been amazed, when visiting that town, by the size of the mighty Peace River itself, noting how it drained into another river at the end of its course. And that other river drains into the Mackenzie River, and that river flows past Inuvik and drains into the Arctic Ocean itself, just over 60 miles away. It was like the seeing the culmination of something I'd kicked off 5 years ago.
We then walked back into town, looking for something to eat. For some reason we settled on a place called Al Forno, the name of which is an Italian style meaning "baked in the oven". From the outside it looked like a dump, from the inside it looked like... a dump. There were no lights on inside, it looked closed. Then a little wizened guy appeared out of the shadows... "I keep de lights off to keep de bugs away" (he was right to do so, there are lots of mosquitoes here). We ordered two cheese burgers, and he went off to cook them. It was a weird, weird place, but the guy's burgers were great, on lovely toasted buns. We were eating them (the only two people eating in the joint), when a guy showed up and started talking to the proprietor. "Hi... I hear you got some work needs doing? Plastering, dry walling?" "Dat's right." "Only I just going out of jail..."
It was an eyebrow moment.
Who can judge? Anyone of us can fall on hard times. And the guy's burgers were good.
We finished up and left calmly, then went on to the Visitor Centre (we should have gone there first really, but the weather had been so good - coats off, t-shirts in the sunshine), and having finished there, we went back into town via the Greenhouse Project (trying to grow fresh veg year round for Arctic communities) to some of the local gift shops to stock up on some souvenirs.
We got Chinese take-out from The Roost and took it back to our hotel with a bottle of wine. It wasn't the best Chinese ever, but I'd eat that over KFC, who have a franchise here (no Golden Arches though, which must be a first).
I'm glad we came here. I'm doubly glad I hadn't driven two days up the Dempster Highway to get here, as I think it would have been a disappointment. But Inuvik is quirky, interesting enough for a day visit, and the people - who continually make these Canadian holidays just that bit more special - take it up another notch. And for icing on the cake, when we were walking back to the hotel with our take-away, a group of Inuvik drummers and dancers were entertaining the crowds on a small bandstand near our hotel. Brilliant.
Back to Dawson tomorrow, more Gold Rush exploring to do yet.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Day 10 - Dawson City
On 16th August 1896 three men - George Carmack, Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie - discovered gold flakes in the rocks at Rabbit Creek on a river the Indian name of which white men could not pronounce properly. They gathered together enough flakes to fill a Winchester rifle cartridge casing, and headed down to Fortymile near the Alaska border to stake their claims. The name of the river was Tr'ondëk, but it became better known as the Klondike.
The story of the Klondike Gold Rush is better told in other places, but the upshot is that in the late 1890s more than 100,000 men (and some women) headed up to Alaska and the Yukon to try and make their fortunes in the latest stampede (it being just one of many, and probably the last great one). Of those 100,000, less than 30,000 made it to the Klondike region, and only a handful of those made it truly and permanently rich. A lot were fleetingly rich, but quickly squandered their new found fortunes on drink and ladies of the night and foolish ventures.
One man - Joseph Ladue - saw beyond the immediate need to amass gold, and realised that the prospectors would need somewhere to live, and somewhere to spend their new-found wealth. He spent all his money on lumber and a sawmill, and shipped it all to the place where the Klondike River ran into the Yukon. There he started to build a town, with houses and saloons and hotels, and the prospectors flooded in. He named the new town Dawson City, after Canadian geologist George Dawson, who had surveyed western Canada in the 1870s. It was people like Joseph Ladue, who became the service industry for the prospectors, who made true and lasting fortunes for themselves.
We breakfasted this morning while Andy Murray won a deserved Men's Wimbledon Final back in England. It was a warm day, and after walking down to the river to take a few photos, we soon came back and changed into shorts and sandals. It seems insane to be this far north, wearing shorts and sandals because of the heat, when the ground just a few metres below us is permanently frozen. This is a feature of northern Canada, and something not well understood by the people who constructed the first buildings here; a number of those buildings are twisted and cockeyed, as the warmth they generated seeped into the ground, melted the permafrost, and skewed the foundations. More modern buildings here and further north are built on raised stilts, not to avoid the snow, but to avoid heating up the ground.
We walked along the edge of the Yukon River, on a raised dike that was built to prevent the river from flooding the town during the spring ice break, when blocks of ice can block the river lower down and cause it to spill its banks. Initially this dike was a source of disgruntlement for some of the inhabitants of Dawson, as it separated them from the river which they saw as the raison d'être of the town, but when they realised it was also helping to keep their feet and homes dry, they came to accept it. It's also been made into a real feature, with informative boards and picnic areas dotted along its length.
At one end of the town the Klondike flows into the Yukon, and at the other a ferry takes traffic across the river, from the Klondike Highway and over to the Top Of The World Highway which we shall be following in a few days time. At the end of the dike we turned and went back through the town; Front Street, facing the river, and the first couple of streets back, continue the Gold Rush theme, it's only when you get further back you find the residential and administrative buildings. Billy Connolly visited Dawson during his time filming his Journey to the Edge of the World series. He described the town as being tired, trying too hard, and not to his tastes. It's true that Dawson is a bit of a one trick pony, and could easily become a caricature of itself, but it must be pointed out that this is a town with very few options: the question must be asked, if not the Gold Rush, then what else? No one travels this far north on a whim, and the historical aspect of Dawson in relation to the last great Gold Rush cannot be denied or ignored. I think Dawson succeeds far more than it fails. My Moon "pamphlet" of The Yukon & The Northwest Territories describes Dawson City as a "delightful salmagundi of colorful [sic] historic facades and abandonded buildings", and I think that sums it up admirably.
We picked up some sandwiches and drinks from the Bonanza Market, and sat on a bench on the edge of the river, reading and watching the Klondike Spirit taking old Americans on a journey up and down the water. We'll be going on it later in the week, I'm sure. After a while we headed back down to the confluence of the Klondike and the Yukon, and through the back of the town to find Robert Service's cabin. Robert Service was born in Preston, England, and arrived in the Yukon in 1904. He wasn't a prospector but rather a bank clerk, yet his love of the characters and stories of the Gold Rush led him to write verse that became famous for capturing the spirit of the era. He made so much money that he left his job at the Dawson branch of the Canadian Bank Of Commerce, and took up residence in the little cabin on 8th Avenue, where he remained until he left Dawson in 1912.
By now it was beer o'clock, so we came back to the hotel for a Yukon Gold (the beer, not the potato) and a glass of wine for Sandra. Tomorrow we have quite a long day planned, so it's an early night for us.
The story of the Klondike Gold Rush is better told in other places, but the upshot is that in the late 1890s more than 100,000 men (and some women) headed up to Alaska and the Yukon to try and make their fortunes in the latest stampede (it being just one of many, and probably the last great one). Of those 100,000, less than 30,000 made it to the Klondike region, and only a handful of those made it truly and permanently rich. A lot were fleetingly rich, but quickly squandered their new found fortunes on drink and ladies of the night and foolish ventures.
One man - Joseph Ladue - saw beyond the immediate need to amass gold, and realised that the prospectors would need somewhere to live, and somewhere to spend their new-found wealth. He spent all his money on lumber and a sawmill, and shipped it all to the place where the Klondike River ran into the Yukon. There he started to build a town, with houses and saloons and hotels, and the prospectors flooded in. He named the new town Dawson City, after Canadian geologist George Dawson, who had surveyed western Canada in the 1870s. It was people like Joseph Ladue, who became the service industry for the prospectors, who made true and lasting fortunes for themselves.
We breakfasted this morning while Andy Murray won a deserved Men's Wimbledon Final back in England. It was a warm day, and after walking down to the river to take a few photos, we soon came back and changed into shorts and sandals. It seems insane to be this far north, wearing shorts and sandals because of the heat, when the ground just a few metres below us is permanently frozen. This is a feature of northern Canada, and something not well understood by the people who constructed the first buildings here; a number of those buildings are twisted and cockeyed, as the warmth they generated seeped into the ground, melted the permafrost, and skewed the foundations. More modern buildings here and further north are built on raised stilts, not to avoid the snow, but to avoid heating up the ground.
We walked along the edge of the Yukon River, on a raised dike that was built to prevent the river from flooding the town during the spring ice break, when blocks of ice can block the river lower down and cause it to spill its banks. Initially this dike was a source of disgruntlement for some of the inhabitants of Dawson, as it separated them from the river which they saw as the raison d'être of the town, but when they realised it was also helping to keep their feet and homes dry, they came to accept it. It's also been made into a real feature, with informative boards and picnic areas dotted along its length.
At one end of the town the Klondike flows into the Yukon, and at the other a ferry takes traffic across the river, from the Klondike Highway and over to the Top Of The World Highway which we shall be following in a few days time. At the end of the dike we turned and went back through the town; Front Street, facing the river, and the first couple of streets back, continue the Gold Rush theme, it's only when you get further back you find the residential and administrative buildings. Billy Connolly visited Dawson during his time filming his Journey to the Edge of the World series. He described the town as being tired, trying too hard, and not to his tastes. It's true that Dawson is a bit of a one trick pony, and could easily become a caricature of itself, but it must be pointed out that this is a town with very few options: the question must be asked, if not the Gold Rush, then what else? No one travels this far north on a whim, and the historical aspect of Dawson in relation to the last great Gold Rush cannot be denied or ignored. I think Dawson succeeds far more than it fails. My Moon "pamphlet" of The Yukon & The Northwest Territories describes Dawson City as a "delightful salmagundi of colorful [sic] historic facades and abandonded buildings", and I think that sums it up admirably.
We picked up some sandwiches and drinks from the Bonanza Market, and sat on a bench on the edge of the river, reading and watching the Klondike Spirit taking old Americans on a journey up and down the water. We'll be going on it later in the week, I'm sure. After a while we headed back down to the confluence of the Klondike and the Yukon, and through the back of the town to find Robert Service's cabin. Robert Service was born in Preston, England, and arrived in the Yukon in 1904. He wasn't a prospector but rather a bank clerk, yet his love of the characters and stories of the Gold Rush led him to write verse that became famous for capturing the spirit of the era. He made so much money that he left his job at the Dawson branch of the Canadian Bank Of Commerce, and took up residence in the little cabin on 8th Avenue, where he remained until he left Dawson in 1912.
By now it was beer o'clock, so we came back to the hotel for a Yukon Gold (the beer, not the potato) and a glass of wine for Sandra. Tomorrow we have quite a long day planned, so it's an early night for us.
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